Anahit Hovhannisyan

Dr. Anahit Hovhannisyan is originally from Armenia, where she received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Biophysics at Yerevan State University of Armenia. As an undergraduate, she worked on ' Oligonucleosomal DNA fragmentation of rat liver nuclei under insulin administration' project. During her master’s degree she worked at the Buniatian Institute of Biochemistry, NAS of Armenia, where she investigated light induced damage on rat retina. Her focus was visual processing, neurodegeneration and plasticity, which involved interaction between neurons and glial cells. She pursued her Ph.D. in Germany at the University of Tübingen and Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, an international research center, where she worked on two projects in parallel: 'Effect of Jimpy Mutation on Retinal Structure and Function' and 'Response of oligodendrocyte precursor cells to various patterns of axonal activity in corpus callosum'. After completing her Ph.D., she accepted an invitation to work in the US. She received a Postdoc position and joined the ‘Retina Plasticity’ project from UC Santa Cruz and Stanford University. Since 2017, she has been a lecturer in the biology department at California State University, Fresno. She has interdisciplinary training, and has taught about 14 different courses for undergraduate, graduate, as well as BOND programs. During her teaching career she received training in active learning and evidence-based teaching and is implementing changes in her classes to improve students’ engagement and learning outcomes. Her students have contributed to over 40 research projects in over 3 years to local symposiums and received distinguished certificates. Her students designed and developed educational projects for the Fresno Discovery Center, and some of their works have been sent to the SICB educational online journal. She is currently involved in a couple of teaching methodology improvement projects which involve evidence-based teaching and active learning techniques.