Instructor: Kirsten Turlo, Ph.D

Biography: I discovered my passion for science in high school when trying to determine how a molecular test for electrocution might be developed, following a high-profile case of racehorse electrocutions in insurance fraud. Unfortunately, my work electrocuting hot dogs and chicken wings from the grocery store did not yield significant breakthroughs.  And I am now a vegetarian. I earned associates degrees in Business Administration, Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences from Sierra College before transferring to UC Davis. I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Genetics and worked in wildlife forensics on poaching cases for the then California Department of Fish and Game, now the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

For my PhD I studied in the laboratory of Dr. Luisa Iruela-Arispe, exploring the molecular regulation of blood pressure here at UCLA and did a short postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Dr. Stephen G. Young, also here at UCLA.

In 2014 I began my teaching career with the Biomedical Research Minor, here at UCLA and have continued to teach with the Minor.  The focus of my teaching has always been to make the material as accessible as possible and then open-up the floor for critical discussion. Asking, “What do we really know from this work?” And “what have we still to learn?” I currently teach a journal club (BMD RES 193H) and Biomedical Research 1A: Science in Your Time, a course I developed with my colleague, Dr. Diana Rigueur that meets both the Life Science GE requirement and the Diversity requirement.