Biological Sciences

Ecology explores how organisms interact with each other and their environment at the molecular, individual, population, community, ecosystem, and global levels.  This introductory course covers basic ecological concepts and their applications in conservation, agriculture, habitat/ecosystem management, and climate change mitigation. Led by multiple professors with their extensive expertise in ecology, the course instructs on why ecology is the "user manual of the Earth" (Ho 2018) and how ecological processes play their role in maintaining biodiversity richness, ecosystem functions, and the overall health of our planet.  

This course studies experimental zoology describing interactions between animals and the environment. Emphasis is given to how living organisms obtain resources from the environment, gather information of environmental changes via sensory structures, and respond to adversities of environmental changes by adjusting their body physiology and biochemistry. Topics include energy metabolism, respiration, circulation, photoreception, color change and background adaptation, thermal regulation, muscle contraction and animal movement, and environmental stress and stress responses. 

This course offers a study of the fundamentals of pathophysiology necessary to understand and interpret the mechanisms underlying alterations in different functional systems that lead to the development of disease. It examines the basic principles of pharmacology and the therapeutic tools currently available for treating these pathophysiological alterations. 

The course covers human psychological development from childhood to old age and methods used in research in development psychology. It describes theoretical perspectives on personality and related fields of application. The course consists of four modules, this is the second module: Youth Psychology. This module studies the psychological and biological development during adolescence and its relation to the surrounding environment. In view of the changed patterns of interaction within and outside the family, the studies also include the ability of the teenager to face challenges and stress factors, such as increased demands for independence and personal views.

In their struggle for survival, organisms have to adapt continuously to changes in their abiotic and biotic environment. This course focuses on the molecular mechanisms and consequences of these adaptations for individual organisms and interactions among organisms. Attention is paid to various (a)biotic factors including temperature, drought, feeding conditions, photoperiodicity, intraspecific competition, symbiosis, and parasitism. Common mechanisms and key concepts across kingdoms underlying adaptation and plasticity are analyzed in depth. Examples show how environmental conditions affect signal transduction pathways leading to adaptive changes in ecology, behavior, and phenology.

The sense of agency, the feeling of control over our voluntary actions and their outcomes, stands as a fundamental aspect of the human experience. It represents the inherent phenomenology accompanying one of the most pivotal capacities possessed by living organisms: the ability to effect change in our environments through purposeful, goal-directed behaviour — the very essence of being an agent. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that cognitive scientists from diverse domains have dedicated substantial efforts towards unraveling the underlying cognitive and neural mechanisms that shape this intriguing phenomenon. In this seminar, (1) we will cover the classic papers that have laid the foundation for sense of agency research in experimental psychology, (2) we will discuss and critically evaluate different models and measures of the sense of agency, (3) we will go over sense of agency research involving multiple agents (joint agency and social agency), (4) and finally, we will discuss sense of agency and AI (“synthetic agency”).

This course covers fundamental principles of biological systems at the molecular level, exploring key biomolecules and their functions. It also delves into the history of molecular biology, highlighting pioneers and landmark discoveries. This course also aims to offer insights into molecular systems, including DNA, RNA, and proteins, and to explore recent trends and experimental techniques in the field.

This course examines the diversity of cell types, how these different cells interact with each other, how the cell cycle is controlled, as well as studying the roles of cellular movement, differentiation and interaction in reproduction and development. The laboratory program provides students with hands on training in key techniques such as cell culture, cell signal transduction, mitochondrial physiology, drug discovery in marine organisms, digital microscopy and tissue specific gene expression. 

This course provides an introduction to the study of biogeography. Bridging the fields of ecology and geography, biogeography is the study of the spatial patterns of biological diversity and its causes. Students identify how historical, physical, and biological factors affect present and past distributions of individuals, species, populations, communities, and ecosystems. The actions of humans are a critical force impacting other species, and the human influence on past, present and future species distributions is a central topic in this module.

Microorganisms exist everywhere in human society and the natural environment. They have beneficial functions, such as antibiotic production, and harmful functions such as pandemic diseases. This course aims to understand the characteristics of microorganisms and examine the functions they perform on Earth from the perspectives of diversity, ecology, molecular genetics, and biotechnology.  The course also exposes students to microbiological research methods needed in biomedical science.