SOLER

Guanqi Lu is a 6th-year Ph.D. student in the Biological Sciences program at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS). Her research focuses on the structural biology of G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling. Before joining the SOLER team, Guanqi worked at the Center for Teaching and Learning first as a Fellow in Academic Administration (FAA) with the GSPS team and later as a Teaching Assessment Fellow (TAF). She is currently contributing to the SOLER public health learning analytics project, which investigates how nudges affect student engagement in public health courses.

Emily Makowicz is a 6th-year PhD student in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. She went to Hunter College for her BA and MA degrees in biology and is now working on studying the effects of early life stress on the dopaminergic system. Aside from research, Emily is an enthusiastic educator and has been actively involved with the Center for Teaching and Learning since 2024. Emily was a Lead Teaching Fellow (2024-2025) and Senior Lead Teaching Fellow (2025-2026) for the Neurobiology and Behavior department at Columbia University. Her main interests in pedagogy are implementing inclusive teaching practices and enhancing active learning in STEM. Through her career as a scientist and educator, Emily hopes to make STEM education accessible for students of all backgrounds.

Kiran Samuel is a PhD candidate in sociology studying the political economy of venture capital in artificial intelligence. Approaching AI as a social and political project as much as a technical one, she examines how the stories VCs tell about AI’s future translate into financial and political power. Pedagogically, Kiran treats teaching as an extension of this work — equipping students with the conceptual tools to interrogate the world critically and generously, and to see inequality as something to be understood and addressed rather than accepted. Kiran holds an MA from NYU in Media, Culture, and Communication, and a BA in Journalism and Philosophy from Rutgers University. Prior to academia, she enjoyed a career as a creative strategy in the advertising industry, with clients including Google, Mozilla, Horizon Media, and other companies turned subjects of her research.

Bennett Slibeck is a PhD candidate at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO), where he studies dinosaur footprints, the End Triassic Extinction (202 million years ago), and global environmental change through the Mesozoic (252-65 million years ago). A lifelong New Yorker, Bennnett completed his undergraduate study at Columbia University, with a BA in Earth Science. Recently, he has been working to understand the role of awe as an affective lens in geoscience education, through formal research and his role as a GSAS Teaching Scholar. Bennett considers himself a storyteller above all else, and believes that paleontology provides our best framework for navigating an increasingly volatile future. Through his career as a scientist and educator, Bennett hopes to inspire people to see the deeply intrinsic sense of wonder gained through careful observation of any natural system, such that they carry that wonder with them into a more beautiful world.