Summary
BSc. Medical Biosciences
Dr Kirsty Flower is a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine, and a member of the development team for the new BSc. Medical Biosciences (BMB) course, which launched in September 2017. In this role she has taught on a variety of modules across the programme, and has been involved with many aspects of the development of the course, e-learning/online and immersive content, workshops designed to support the teaching faculty, and support teaching fellow development.
She is currently Module Lead for the Statistics (STAT) module, which teaching basic statistics for biosciences alongside R coding, to allow for the exploration of datasets and the practical implantation of the statistical concepts studied. The module is taught used Flipped Classroom, and is supported by resources created using Articulate Rise, MedLearn, and DataCamp.
Kirsty has supported modules across the course in the transition to online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the evolution to hybrid teaching. BMB has successfully instigated hybrid teaching for a cohort of 170 students, half in class and half online.
Kirsty is the head of Academic Tutoring for BMB. This role oversees the academic tutoring programme delivered to BMB students throughout the 3-year course, and supports tutors in delivering academic skills training, as well as acting as a key contact for queries regarding academic and curriculum matters.
Prior to her teaching fellow role, Kirsty was a postdoctoral researcher in the Epigenetics Unit in the Department of Surgery and Cancer at Imperial (2011-2017), and you can read more about her research in the research tab.
Educational Research interests
In 2021, Kirsty completed a Masters in University Learning and Teaching (MEd ULT), from the Education Development Unit at Imperial. This project was titled "How does LGBTQIA identity impact student experience in the active learning classroom?". This study has been presented in the following forums:
- UCU LGBT research conference (online oral presentation), November 2021
- LGBT STEMinar (online poster), January 2022
- Festival of Learning and Teaching, Imperial, (online oral presentation), May 2022
She is particularly interested in exploring the impact of active learning on student populations, as well as the study habits of students engaging on courses utilising active learning.
Additional teaching responsibilities
During her time at Imperial, Kirsty has undertaken lectures, teaching and assessment on various undergraduate and postgraduate courses:
- BSc. Biomedical Sciences
- BSc. Surgery and Anaesthesia
- MSc. Reproductive and Developmental Sciences
- MSc. Cancer Biology (Cancer Informatics stream)
On these courses she taught many topics including DNA transcription, RNA translation, specific biological aspects of cancer, epigenetics and immunotherapy.
She has also supervised MSc. student projects, PhD student lab activity and acted as postdoc mentor to students.
Until 2016 she was a Postdoc representative for the Department of Surgery and Cancer, attending divisional and departmental committee meetings - including the People and Culture Committee, where she assisted with the department's Athena Swan application - and participating in the Hammersmith Postdoc Committee, organising events and training for the Hammersmith Postdoc Community.
In the summer of 2016, Kirsty coordinated the academic content for the Faculty of Medicine Summer School, "Revolutions in Biomedicine". This content comprised of eight days of teaching, addressing themes such as Big Data, Brain Sciences, Genomic Medicine and Cancer Revolutions, using traditional lectures combined with Team Based Learning (TBL) techniques, demonstrations and workshops. The students also completed a two week mini research project, and the summer school culminated in a three hour exam.
Publications
Journals
Oltra SS, Pena-Chilet M, Flower K, et al., 2019, Acceleration in the DNA methylation age in breast cancer tumours from very young women, Scientific Reports, Vol:9, ISSN:2045-2322
Beetch M, Lubecka K, Shen K, et al., 2019, Stilbenoid-Mediated Epigenetic Activation of Semaphorin 3A in Breast Cancer Cells Involves Changes in Dynamic Interactions of DNA with DNMT3A and NF1C Transcription Factor., Mol Nutr Food Res, Pages:e1801386-e1801386
Schlegel C, Flower K, Youssef J, et al., 2019, Mise-en-place: Learning across disciplines, International Journal of Gastronomy and Food Science, Vol:16, ISSN:1878-450X
Oltra SS, Pena-Chilet M, Vidal-Tomas V, et al., 2018, Methylation deregulation of miRNA promoters identifies miR124-2 as a survival biomarker in Breast Cancer in very young women, Scientific Reports, Vol:8, ISSN:2045-2322
Lubecka K, Flower K, Beetch M, et al., 2018, Loci-specific differences in blood DNA methylation in HBV-negative populations at risk for hepatocellular carcinoma development, Epigenetics, Vol:13, ISSN:1559-2294, Pages:605-626