Prof. Gutenkunst’s central educational goal is to prepare undergraduate and graduate students for the increasingly quantitative world of biology. He furthers this goal through his teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels at the University of Arizona and through his teaching at international workshops.
University of Arizona
MCB 315: Key Concepts in Quantitative Biology
Dr. Gutenkunst developed MCB 315 to introduce biology students to the power of quantitative approaches, including probabilistic and differential equation modeling.
MCB 447/547: Big Data in Molecular Biology and Biomedicine
Dr. Gutenkunst developed MCB 447/547 to introduce biology students to machine learning approaches to grapple with big molecular and genomic data.
MCB 575: Scientific Communication
Dr. Gutenkunst teaches this core class for Molecular and Cellular Biology graduate students. During the course, students develop and submit an application for an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. In the first year Ryan taught this course, out of the seven students enrolled, two won Honorable Mention and two won the Fellowship.
International workshops
q-bio Summer School
The q-bio Summer School is a two-week school for graduate students and postdocs interested in quantitative biology. Dr. Gutenkunst has taught several times at the school, focusing on parameter inference and evolutionary applications of systems biology.
Workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics
At the 1st Workshop on Population and Speciation Genomics in Český Krumlov, Czech Republic, Dr. Gutenkunst delivered a day of lectures and exercises focused on demographic history inference from population genomic data, Python programming, and using ∂a∂i.