Prof. Robert Lue, Life Sciences Innovator at Harvard

Topic: "The Transformation of Teaching and Learning in the Life Sciences"

Each year our club collaborates with the Harvard Alumni Association in selecting an outstanding Harvard faculty member to speak to our club. This year, we were highly honored to host Professor Robert Lue who has revolutionized the way life sciences are taught and learned at Harvard. His presentation (including creative visual effects) was of broad interest to all alums in our area, with a special appeal to educators.

As Chair of the FAS’s Life Sciences Education Committee, he led in the creation of a new introductory Life Sciences curriculum, which now serves as an integrated foundation for department course offerings in Molecular and Cellular Biology, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Biological Anthropology. As part of this broad revision, Rob led an initiative to make innovative computing and visualization an integral part of the curriculum as it evolves.

Rob received his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard and has taught undergraduate courses there since 1988. He has developed award-winning educational multimedia on several topics including Understanding HIV and AIDS (1999), Biochemistry: Interactive Learning (2000), and The Inner Life of the Cell (2006). Rob also has a longstanding interest in pre-college education and consequently founded and directs a Harvard life sciences outreach program that now serves over fifty high schools across Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. As the recently appointed faculty director of the Harvard-Allston Education Portal, Rob also oversees the integration of undergraduate education with community outreach on Harvard’s new Allston campus.