⌛ BIOPHYSICS

Biophysics was my first teaching duty.

In the classroom, I was about the same age as my students. Or a couple of years older at the most.

That was great because I felt like "one more" in the group.

I clearly remember going with them after class to play handball, ping-pong, and several other sports. And to salsa dancing some other happy times.

Oh boy, the good old years!

But in class, biophysics was a challenge to both the learners and the young professor.

The opportunity was perfect to learn while teaching and to teach while learning. Going hand in hand with my pupils.

Biophysics was the course to know about biomembranes, diffusion, osmosis, and permeability. To understand the passive electrical properties of membranes, the workings of the ion channels, and the generation and propagation of the action potential. To learn about synaptic physiology, molecular motors and muscle contraction, and photobiology. And much more!

Yes, it was a tough course for my students.

It is probably because I know the pain it was, that I get very happy with the nice words my students at the time send me from time to time. Such words make me go back to the late '90s, to the excitements of my first classrooms.

Once you understand Biophysics, you have a solid foundation on which to build a lot of your biosciences education.

After biophysics, I went to use some of its topics in several of the higher-level classes that I teach such as neurobiology, endocrine physiology, comparative animal physiology, biopsychology, and neuroethology. Without a reliable instruction in biophysics and cellular physiology, it would be very difficult for any student to appropriately grasp the explanations of the workings of the living being.

The main difficulty for the biophysics professor lies in the lack of practicals and demonstrations required by the students to learn-by-doing. Thus, the subject is usually taught "on the blackboard" and therefore not very attractive to the students.

One way of dealing with such limitation is by developing digital demonstrations and interactive e-tools that help the student gain the necessary first-hand experience for a better comprehension of the hardest concepts and experiments.

If I go "back" to teach Biophysics, I would put a significant effort into all kinds of digital means for my students to advance their practical appreciation of the subject. Models, simulations, graphical explanations, and interactive demonstrations would for sure make a significant portion of my classes.

When that day comes, I will probably feel like "starting all over again" with my teaching.

I have the impression that I will enjoy the future Biophysics like I enjoyed the first classes I taught, 27 years ago.

And I can't wait to make it happen! 😎

⏳ PHYSIOLOGY

I want to say this very clearly: I was lucky to have excellent guidance at the beginning of my journey as a young professor!

That translated into careful advice on how to successfully navigate my classes and growing teaching duties from biophysics to physiology.

Physiology covers the study of the body workings under "normal" conditions. We all use physiology when we dance, eat, study, breathe, sleep, fall in love, or do anything else.

For my training in teaching body functions, the year-long course was segmented into several chapters dealing with each of the main physiological organ systems. Thus, I could laser-focus on one at a time and go in-depth in my studies on the pedagogy of physiology teaching.

Finally, my classes were divided into:

Sort of.

It took me several years to go through all of these systems. Each one poses different challenges both for the professor and the student.

The neuronal integration of information that takes place in the nervous system has "nothing to do" with the chemical degradation of food in the small intestine, or with the active filtering of the blood in the kidneys.

Each organ system uses a particular set of concepts, equations, laboratory equipment, and practical demonstrations that require you to "start from scratch" when you change from one to another.

That also means you have much more available knowledge and many more possibilities to fall in love with physiology.

And so I did.

However, I had my preferences. When teaching physiology, I enjoyed the most when I was teaching about the structure and function of the nervous system.

I was enchanted by neurophysiology, because of its beauties, and because of how much Cajal's words resonated with what I thought -and still think- about the universe...

I also liked the other systems though.

And the more I taught them, the more I enjoyed them.

Little by little I was feeling ready to move forward onto the "big sisters" of the physiologies: Comparative Animal Physiology, Behavioral Neuroscience, and Neuroethology.

These are the ones I enjoy the most in my current teaching.

In the summer, I teach a class on Behavioral Neuroscience at Cornell University. Six very intense weeks to explain the biological basis of behavior in humans and other animals. With an emphasis on how brain function influences our behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.

Neuroethology is the course around which the International Schools of Neuroethology are organized (see here ). Neuroethology is very valuable and too much fun to teach. I frequently organize one international school every two years, together with amazing scientists from all over the world. I am also lucky to teach an introduction to neuroethology as part of the courses organized by the Visiting Lecture Team Program of IBRO. One of the highest honors of my academic career.

To Comparative Animal Physiology I hope to come back at some point in my future teaching. There is so much to appreciate and learn about how different animal species solve similar and unique environmental challenges they face in their daily life. Teaching comparative animal physiology is like immersing in a magic well of animal wonders.

So, when I look at physiology I see a whole range of close, still particular, subjects that explain how it is that we accomplish what we do in life; from the very trivial to the very sophisticated.

I feel that to understand and to properly teach all of Physiology the professor would need a whole life of dedication.

What for an exciting challenge 🤓 .

⌛ GENERAL BIOLOGY

It is known that General Biology is commonly taught as a 100-level course in the first couple of semesters of higher education schools.

This is a class intended for students majoring in the biological sciences or pharmacy, and oftentimes for aspiring medical students.

One could have the impression that it is just an "entry-level" course, and therefore probably not very attractive for "mature" professors.

Maybe, but not for me.

When I decided -in my early childhood- that I wanted to become a biologist, it was because I was attracted by the whole of biology. Fascinated by all living beings and their interactions with all kinds of matters and energies.

In my opinion, there is no other course that would allow you to better grasp the concepts and theories in the life sciences than General Biology. When a professor "gets there", she or he can put all the biosciences' pieces back together. And at the moment, life beauties and mysteries will grow to new heights.

You can imagine that I was dreaming of that moment hitting my teaching career.

So, when it happened in 2009, I felt I was ready for it!

At the time I was already 15 happy years into my teaching duties and leading a successful research group in neuroethology and bioacoustics.

And still, general biology was the challenge I expected it to be. The course was organized around lectures, laboratories, and fieldwork, and therefore quite demanding.

But when the students are excellent, they will undoubtedly grow to your expectations, and many times surpass them. And you end up with top joy as a reward for the hard work gone into designing and teaching the course.

If lucky, some of your best students -such as Annette Hernandez and Dennis Franco in my case- will let you know how much general biology and your teaching impacted their lives.

When you take or teach General Biology, you have to know you'll be dealing with all of biology.

And those are big words!

Biology is arguably the most complex of all the natural sciences. To start with, it relies heavily on physics and chemistry. And also on math and computer sciences.

In studying biology, one feel like going back and forth between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the formal sciences.

Consider the following main topics in General Biology:

In 2020, each topic has grown enough to become its own field. The full amount of knowledge accumulated in any of these areas of biology is impossible to grasp by any one individual.

Once you decide to study General Biology you are coming to an exciting never-ending story.

I don't teach this course anymore, but you can imagine I look forward to the opportunity again.

Teaching General Biology is my opportunity to inspire others to learn more about what life is, how it is impacted by our actions, and which plans we should advance to bring better quality to all forms of life, human or not.

What about you? Did you enjoy biology as a student?

I hope so.

If not, I want to be one of those who will try hard to create demos, videos, games, and other means to change your experience with biology.

Because biology deserves your appreciation.

If you did, you are already one of us. Therefore, only one more thing to say here.

Cheers! 🥂

🌎 NEUROETHOLOGY

I know this is a hard-to-grasp subject name, but surely one to learn.

Neuroethology studies how nervous systems generate and control natural behavior in animals.

How the bat search and find its prey in the dark of the night?

How the songbird learns its melodies and rehearses them in its dreams?

How the electric fish sense and navigate the murky waters of rivers?

These are questions for neuroethology.

The neuroethologist combines neurobiology and ethology to uncover general principles of the nervous system from the study of animals with exaggerated or specialized behaviors, and those specialized animals are abundant in areas with high biodiversity levels.

Given the role that neuroethology can have in fostering the multidisciplinary approach to science, in promoting brain awareness and in valuing biodiversity, capacity building in this scientific field is a guarantee of academic and research development.

Still, neuroethology is limited to relatively few countries and academic institutions in the world.

Already as a young researcher and professor, I knew about the positive impact that neuroethology had on education, research, and conservation.

I've had the opportunity to be a participant student in the first Latin American School of Neuroethology in Chile in 2002.

I quickly realized the huge impact that the school had on all of the participants' academic and personal lives.

It definitely changed my life, and for the good!

About 10 years later was probably the right time to give back and start organizing the schools in other countries without the strong neuroethology tradition of Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.

Our first school happened in Cuba in 2011, and it was endorsed and supported by both the International Brain Research Organization (IBRO) and the International Society for Neuroethology (ISN).

Another Caribbean School followed in 2013, and this one was also a great success. With students and faculty from 11 countries, the School offered an international scenario to emphasize the value of collaboration for modern science.

There was a growing interest in this type of neuroscience courses in other regions of Latin America. The students that had been taking the schools in Cuba were now inviting us to organize similar on-site training in their home countries.

And the Andean region was leading the call!

Thus, after the 2nd Caribbean School in Cuba, I decided to apply for funds with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany to create the Latin American Network for Neuroethology (LANN) and continue with the organization of neuroethology schools in new countries.

Among the several programs available, there was one right for this purpose: the Innovative Networking Initiatives Grant.

I was very lucky to receive the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation's award for the creation of LANN in 2014. The grant was critical for the continuation of the schools.

( Explore this and other programs of the Humboldt Foundation here .)

In 2015, the 1st Andean School of Neuroethology was organized in Peru, and in 2019, the 2nd Andean School was organized in Colombia. And with each school, we got a growing number of requests to bring the schools to new countries.

Bolivia and Costa Rica could well be the next venues for Latin American Schools of Neuroethology.

Here are a few characteristics of these schools:

And what is also important: these schools are a lot of fun and completely free!

Below, I share with you some illustrative pictures of the four schools of neuroethology organized so far in the Caribbean and the Andes.

Every time I look at these pictures, I renew my resolution to devote the rest of my life -also- to capacity building in neuroethology.

And that was a main reason behind the decision to go "the entrepreneurial path": to raise the funds necessary for this endeavor!

The neuroethology schools have been free of charge for all the participant students, but only because of the generous financial support received by IBRO, the ISN, and the Humboldt Foundation.

But, wouldn't it be great if some of us, IBRO-alumni and Humboldtians, could also generate our own funds to spread even further the educational efforts of these organizations?!

I believe so.

By being multidisciplinary and by valuing the diversity of the physical world, neuroethology holds the scientific point of view of Alexander von Humboldt, and it is, therefore, an appropriate discipline to establish a network with which spread Humboldt’s beliefs about the need and importance of lasting international academic collaboration based on common understanding and mutual benefits.

So, here it is. The reasons behind my efforts to spread this branch of modern neuroscience.

What do you say? Any chance we meet in the next school of neuroethology?

Just in case, I'll keep you in the loop 😎 .

🌏 BIOACOUSTICS

Bioacoustics is so much fun!

This one is also a multidisciplinary science.

( Remember neuroethology, in which neurobiology joined ethology, ecology, and several other disciplines? )

In bioacoustics, biology is "crossed" with acoustics to investigate sound production, propagation, and reception in animals. Its goal is to understand animal communication through sound.

How the flying bat adapts the design of its echolocation calls during navigation and hunting?

What is the evolutionary value of a rich vocal repertoire in songbirds?

Can we use sound to identify crickets in the field?

Would different frogs use non-overlapping frequency ranges for sympatric communication?

These are questions for bioacoustics.

The bioacoustician devotes a considerable amount of time to the recording and analysis of animal sounds. In this field, one sort of gets hooked on songs, calls, chirps, buzzes, screams, roars, barks, meows, and hundreds of other acoustic emissions.

When nature calls, we listen!

But in bioacoustics, we then go much further. We want to know how the animal's morphology and physiology define each vocalization, we want to understand how the signal gets shaped by the medium in which it travels, and we want to know how the sensory systems of mates, prey, and predators decode and interpret the messages carried by sound.

We want to know this and much more.

In my case, I was very lucky to start my scientific career in a lab of neuroethology and bioacoustics. And much more to study the acoustic coevolution of bats and moths, an exquisite model of predator-prey evolutionary arms race that still goes on every night around the planet.

Even when a significant piece of my lab's research dealt with sound processing along the auditory pathway of bats and moths, much of what we did fell under the scope of acoustic monitoring.

And acoustic monitoring is closer to the core of the courses of bioacoustics that I teach on-site.

The main reason to focus on acoustic monitoring when organizing courses of bioacoustics in remote natural parks is this: it is very challenging, quite expensive, and time-consuming to bring sound production and sensory processing neurobiology experiments to the field.

Because I want to organize high-level on-site courses, which are also short and affordable, neurobiology is not included.

( But this other part of bioacoustics is included in the neuroethology schools.)

Noticeable our bioacoustics workshops always follow biocentrism - more than anthropocentrism - to make students remember that what we hear, record, and interpret out of animal signals is not what the animals themselves hear, decode, and interpret.

In our desire to play a good Dr. Doolitle, it is essential to "learn and emulate the whats and hows of animal communication".

But in understanding how is it that information transfer occurs, one obvious first step is the acquisition and analysis of high-fidelity recordings of the acoustic repertoire of our species.

That is one key goal of our acoustic monitoring and bioacoustics workshops.

To accomplish this goal we have to identify, address, and solve many theoretical and practical challenges.

From the physics of sound to the critical evaluation of the recording gear, from the digitalization of signals to the construction of data-smart spectrograms, from the understanding of traditional acoustic parameters to the coding of tailored measurements to tackle the specifics in our projects. We have to make it all work.

Bioacoustics first sparked in me when I started my training with my German advisor Prof. Dr. Manfred Kössl in 1996. ( Check Manfred's research here ). He and Prof. Dr. Marianne Vater were exquisite at their research in the lab and so much fun in the field. Our bat-cave-hunting expeditions are unforgettable.

A second spark came with the Workshop on "Recording Natural Sounds" in 2002, the first one of its kind in Cuba. That one was organized by the staff of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Greg Budney , Chris Clark , and Russ Charif left a serious mark on my bioacoustics motivation and early training. They were the ones who made me pay attention to sounds outside bats and moths.

And after meeting them I went full into bioacoustics mode!

Together with my students, I started right away with bioacoustics research in birds, frogs, dolphins, fishes, long-horn beetles, hutias, and crocodiles. Yes, crocodiles.

Three years later was the time to start giving back. And in 2005 I organized my first on-site workshop on "Bat Echolocation Monitoring". Notice in the photo below that I still had hair in 2005!

Then, in 2007, I was invited to join the Cornell Lab of Ornithology faculty to teach a workshop on "Bioacoustics in Conservation". That was a true honor! 😊

Later came the requests to organize and teach on-site courses about bioacoustics in other Latin American countries.

For the last courses, I was joined by Greg Budney from CLO, and by a team of talented programmers (Alfredo Somoza, Frank Macias, and Yovany Silva) with whom I was developing "duetto, a platform for the automatic acoustic monitoring of biodiversity”. The courses were organized around our platform.

( After 8 years of work, duetto is still under development, facing the well-known challenges of lack of time and funding 😖 )

Here are a few characteristics of my bioacoustics courses:

It is needless to say that these courses are also a lot of fun.

I am sharing below example pictures of some of the courses in bioacoustics that I have organized throughout the years.

And many more are about to come.

We have many requests to organize on-site courses in bioacoustics in countries around the globe. The invitations keep coming because the more we know about bioacoustics the higher the quality of our courses and projects, and the more we can involve local students in doing work and research in this field.

So far these are not free courses. But they are very affordable for students and hobbyists alike. And if you take into account the quality/cost ratio, our courses are the cheapest available today!

I believe in the necessity of nature's conservation. And I believe in the indispensable role that all citizens play in preserving nature for generations to come.

But we don't protect what we don't know.

And surely sound is one of the main doors to come to appreciate, explore, and know nature.

I also bet for bioacoustics because today everybody has a high-quality microphone in their ever-evolving mobile phone. Thus, everyone can easily contribute to the understanding and conservation of our biodiversity.

I feel it is my duty to motivate people to take part in the fun of monitoring biodiversity, and I can do that through my teaching.

So far, these are not free courses, I know. But I will pursue this goal: to make bioacoustics courses free for everybody. As I've said, this is one main reason behind my decision to go "the entrepreneurial path".

In the meantime, I will continue improving the quality of my courses so that everyone taking them gets top value and renewed motivation.

Now it comes back to you. Are you attending or organizing one on-site bioacoustics course? Great you do!

And if you need my help to do so, send me a message 😍 .

At inDCLazz, I want to bring these and many more benefits to my students. The proposition is simple: offer as much value as possible to increase the likelihood of students recommending inDCLazz to friends and family.

To bring such high value I need to work seriously on the inDCLazz platform. The design and implementation of demos and models, the shooting and editing of class videos, the writing of each course content... all these require time when betting for quality.

And yes, I have come a long way in getting ready for my online courses, but so much more needs to be done.

So, I don't believe -against my wish- that I'll be able to offer several courses in the coming weeks. But I'll continue working hard to have the first two courses (Biopsychology and Bioacoustics) available in the coming months, before 2020 is over.

The following are courses I'm planning to take into online teaching here at inDCLazz.

As I told you at the beginning of this page, let me know if you want me to consider other courses.

👂 I am all ears 👂

CLOSING FOR NOW

Stay in the loop

I have to stop writing here and go back to coding and studying. inDCLazz is a challenging endeavor indeed.

And I finish with the hope that you and I can meet in the classroom at some point in the future, either onsite or online.

Happy learning.