LEARNING HOW TO LEARN: POWERFUL MENTAL TOOLS TO HELP YOU MASTER TOUGH SUBJECTS

---

BIOGRAPHY

Barbara Oakley, PhD, PE is a Professor of Engineering at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan; a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego; and Coursera’s inaugural “Innovation Instructor.” Her work focuses on the complex relationship between neuroscience and social behavior. Dr. Oakley’s research has been described as “revolutionary” in the Wall Street Journal—she has published in outlets as varied as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. She has won numerous teaching awards, including the American Society of Engineering Education’s Chester F. Carlson Award for technical innovation in engineering education. Together with Terrence Sejnowski, the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute, she co-teaches Coursera – UC San Diego’s “Learning How to Learn,” the world’s most popular massive open online course. Her book A Mind for Numbers: How to Excel at Math and Science (Even If You Flunked Algebra), (Penguin, 2014) is a New York Times best-selling science book.

Dr. Oakley has adventured widely through her lifetime. She rose from the ranks of Private to Captain in the U.S. Army, during which time she was recognized as a Distinguished Military Scholar. She also worked as a communications expert at the South Pole Station in Antarctica, and has served as a Russian translator on board Soviet trawlers on the Bering Sea. Dr. Oakley is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering.

NANOTEXTURED MICROFLUIDIC SUBSTRATES BIOMIMICKING STRUCTURED HIERARCHY OF LIVING SYSTEMS

---

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Iqbal earned his PhD from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA in 2007. Since then he is at University of Texas at Arlington (UT-Arlington). He is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and holds courtesy appointments in the Bioengineering Department as well as in the Urology Department at UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, a national premier medical university. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers – Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (IEEE-EMBS). He is a principal investigator of the Nano-Bio Laboratory (www.uta.edu/nbl). He has authored or coauthored more than 45 peer-reviewed journal papers and have given a number of invited talks/seminars at international conferences/symposia in the areas of nano-fabrication and chip-based detection of DNA, protein biomarkers and cancer cells. He has served on various national and international scientific grant review panels.

He is a senior member of IEEE and professional member of organizations like Biomedical Engineering Society, Biophysical Society, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Sigma Xi, European Society for Nanomedicine, etc. He was a recipient of US NSF CAREER award in 2009. In 2013, Tau Beta Pi inducted him as Eminent Engineer and UT-Arlington selected him for the Honorable Mention for Best Academic Advisor 2012-13 Award. The UT-Arlington College of Engineering nominated him for President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014. He was awarded Sigma Xi Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award in 2014. In November 2014, he was inducted into National Academy of Innovators. Earlier in 2015, he was given the Best Research Mentor Award and again he was nominated for President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching. He was awarded Research Excellence Award by College of Engineering in 2016.

HOW CANADIANS HELPED LINK MEDICINE, BIOLOGY AND ENGINEERING

---

BIOGRAPHY

Dick Bourgeois-Doyle has contributed to many books, articles, TV features, and radio programs on the history of science and creativity in Canada. His biographies of inventive and heroic Canadians have been dubbed “fascinating and inspiring… thorough and engaging” and been celebrated by reviewers in Canada and the U.S. His books include George J. Klein: The Great Inventor, Her Daughter the Engineer: The Life of Elsie Gregory MacGill (both Canadian Science Publishing-NRC Research Press publications) and Stubborn: Big Ed Caswell and the Line from the Valley to the Northland (General Store Publishing House). Bourgeois-Doyle also edited and co-wrote Renaissance II: Canadian Creativity and Innovation in the New Millennium. A former Chief of Staff and Director of Communications to the Canadian Minister of Science and Technology, founding Secretary to Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, and recipient of the NRC Outstanding Achievement Award for Science Awareness, he currently serves as Secretary General of the National Research Council of Canada.