David Oliver

Since 2014, I have led the course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) program in our department. Originally developed in 2001 by my predecessor Dr. William Ramey, our CUREs provide all upper-level students in our undergraduate programs with opportunities to do authentic scientific research. Students work on teams to develop a novel research question, draft a research proposal, execute experiments or workflows, and disseminate their findings in our online undergraduate research journal. Since 2014, I have formalized the structure of our CUREs and enhanced the student experience by introducing opportunities for the development of professional skills such as communication, project management, team work, documentation, and peer review. In 2019, Dr. Graves and I received a UBC grant to further expand the MBIM CURE program. To this end, the shift to remote teaching during the pandemic prompted the development of a new "dry lab" CURE focused on data science with emphasis on microbiomes. In winter term of 2022, we will roll out the first iteration of our fully realized, optimized, and expanded CURE lab program where students in our undergraduate program will do both a wet lab and a dry lab CURE.