Sarah

I am a final year MSci Student at the University of Glasgow studying Molecular and cellular biology (with Biotechnology). For the past few years now, I was good at making students find their joy in their subject again, which they thought they had lost. Back in high school and also now at uni I am always the most enthusiastic student in a project, inspiring and motivating others to find a subject exciting too. I have heard from many people now that I can break things down into more understandable things very easily and that's why I would look forward to keep tutoring students and take up new ones.
For my honours project as part of my final year I worked on assessing different small molecules as protein stabilisers with thermal shift assays, and the courses that I have picked were Current topics in Biotechnology, DNA, Cancer and Core Skills in Molecular and Cellular Biology.
As part of my MSci degree, I have been working in Oxford at the Harwell Campus for a year on cell culture, fluorescently labelled protein tracking and recruitment in live cells in response to DNA damage and Covid-19. I have also designed an optimised expansion microscopy protocol and have studied protein complexes and chromosomes in live cells with FLIM-FRET and predicted and analysed 3D protein structure. I am currently in the submission/writing process of papers about these various projects.
My mother tongue is German, but I am also fluent in Italian, as I grew up there. I can also speak English fluently and a basic level in Spanish.

Tutoring Experience

I have been tutoring 4 different students for more than 4 years now in German, English, Italian, chemistry, physics, biology, maths and philosophy at GCSE/Nat 5 and then IB/A-levels/Highers. One student I used to tutor used to hate maths, chemistry and German, but now she says that it all makes sense, and she actually finds these subjects enjoyable.

Tutoring Approach

I am flexible to teach the student in whatever way suits them best, as I believe that everyone has their own study method, and everyone has a different approach to understand their subjects. On the other hand, I also know some cases where the student does not have a preferred study method yet and has not yet identified what works best for them. In those cases, I love to explore different study methods with the student, so that we discover together what works best for the student.

For anyone studying protein structures/organic chemistry that struggles to understand and memorise these, I have a box of molecules which helps to understand the structures and their properties better in 3D better and thus understand how interactions between proteins occur. I could bring that box of proteins to sessions upon request, as it helped me understand the DNA structure in detail and how specific proteins bend/ cleave or bind the DNA.