Umesh Bhattarai
Significant learning
Unlocking Life’s Mysteries
Teaching
Teaching was my passion from my early school days. Even while I was a student, I learnt more by teaching my classmates. That has developed a good presentation skill within me to teach even tough subject matter simply. That became my characteristic skill when I started my professional teaching career. My goal of teaching is to prepare students for advanced chemistry by introducing some basics about the subject matter and moving towards more complex in sequence. I like to participate students actively and advance their understanding quickly.
Regarding teaching underrepresented population, my long experience of working at Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) has molded me into an effective instructor. I do apply a balanced high and low context cultural frameworks model when implementing concrete changes to their course materials, in order to create a learning environment and develop strong STEM identities. I think the academic validation, utility value, social learning, clarity and deliberate practice are important to underrepresented and socially diverse student population for success.
In conclusion, use of right and required technological tools, giving a well-structured course with clear expectations, fair treatment, individual care regarding different academic backgrounds and clear goal students have to achieve from each lecture or lab experiment are the key components of modern-day teaching and learning. There is no substitute of working hard, but the instructor has a key role to give a clear direction to achieve what a student supposed to learn after each course, as no student will spend their time and money on any class that is not worthy. My goal is to make chemistry a subject that gives a better understanding of all disciplines of science including
medicine, engineering and biology for students.
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Research
I am interested in exploring isolation, characterization, and potential therapeutic target validation for the phytochemicals present in medicinal plants. I am continuously exploring biomarkers associated with various human diseases and pathological conditions using bioinformatics and data science tools. My goal is to exploit these biomarkers as therapeutic targets through high-throughput screening against our natural product library. A brief description of my research goals are described below.
Biomedical data mining and biomarker detection
We use bioinformatics and modern data science tools to determine the expression and compare different biomarkers across various human pathological conditions using publicly available biomedical data. One of our primary focuses is to explore the potential of noncoding RNAs as biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets.
Natural product chemistry and bioactive molecule identification
We isolate, purify and characterize phytochemicals from medicinal plants that are popular all over the world. Our goal is to create a library of natural products that will be a screening library against different therapeutic targets.
Target validation and therapeutic application
After identifying therapeutic targets, we do in-vitro screening against our library of phytochemicals to find out the potential binder. All the potential binders will undergo in-vivo studies in collaboration with other research groups. Our primary interest is to find out the noncoding RNA binding molecules to understand the function of ncRNAs through regulation study and their potential as therapeutic targets.