Meet Our Talent
Meet Heather Verkade
Associate Professor Verkade teaches Molecular Biology to second year students in the Bachelor of Biomedicine. This knowledge can then be applied to many different biomedical fields.
I love the fundamental nature of the field and teaching the absolute basis of life.
“We are trying to understand each individual’s genomic makeup, their microbiome, their environmental history, and how all of these interact to influence their health outcomes. This is leading to personalised medicine, but the deeper we delve, the more detail we discover, and the more we need to develop the skills to interpret all this information” Associate Professor Verkade says.
Winning the MDHS Award for Learning and Teaching Achievement, Associate Professor Verkade says her teaching improved when she started to apply scientific principles to it: “We need to use evidence-based approaches, tailored to specific situations, and to be constantly evaluating and critiquing our approaches.”