Our instructors

Claudia Irace

Claudia Irace received her Laurea in Modern Foreign Language and Literature from the Istituto Universitario di Napoli, Italy where she studied Chinese, English and Korean as well as Far East Asian history, philosophy, arts, and linguistics. She studied and worked in China for two years where she met her Canadian husband and moved to Vancouver in 1999. She spent four years as School Coordinator for the Italian Cultural Centre before joining UBC. Her interests are languages and world cultures as well as kayaking, music, films and animals.

Emmy Issartial

Andrew Iverson

Sumeet Jaswal

Sumeet M. Jaswal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Psychology at UBC. She researches human visual attention, focusing on how people negatively respond to another person’s small, repetitive movements, a phenomenon known as misokinesia. Sumeet is communications coordinator for Brain Buzz, a podcast that makes research fun, accessible and engaging for everyone. She's also a past graduate student volunteer for Let’s Talk Science at UBC, a charity that strives to improve the understanding and appreciation of physical and life sciences, mathematics, engineering and technology.

Marie-Gerald Jean

Alexandra Jewell

Hamad Jifri

Jessica Johnson

Parker Johnson

Parker Johnson is an organizational effectiveness consultant focused on equity, inclusion, diversity work. He has more than 25 years of experience as a facilitator, trainer, mediator, coach and researcher in organizational change, diversity in the workplace, and intercultural communication. His interest in intercultural work began in 1992 at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communications, where he later served as an associate faculty member. Parker has worked with government, higher education institutions, profit and non-profit organizations focusing on facilitating inclusive leadership development, organizational change, and creating inclusive and just organizations. He earned an M.Ed. at Harvard University and has taught communication and social science courses at several universities in Canada and the United States.

Dong Kyong Jung

Somayeh Kamranian

Anya Keefe

Ataollah (Ata) Kheyrandish

Dr. Ataollah (Ata) Kheyrandish, PhD, is an adjunct professor at UBC and an environmental professional whose pioneering work in applying LEDs for water disinfection brought innovative solutions in water treatment. Ata is committed to environmental education and environmental sustainability.

Maria Kilina

Brian Kim

Hyoshin Kim

Hyoshin holds a BA from Ewha University, Korea and a doctoral degree in education from Harvard University. She was on the editorial board for Harvard Education Review. Her first job was a program evaluation associate for international education projects funded by National Science Foundation, National Geographic Society, and IBM. She has taught information technology at both elementary and secondary levels for 6 years. She has also worked for several years in executive education programs for international professionals in North America. Her interests include multicultural education, qualitative research, and professional education of teachers. Before moving to Vancouver, she lived in England, Russia and USA. She speaks English, Korean, and a bit of Japanese and Russian. Hyoshin and her husband live in Vancouver with their son Alex and dog Walter.

Rika Knox

Rika Knox is originally from Japan, and moved to Vancouver in 1993. She has been teaching Japanese since 1997 to students of all ages at schools at local colleges and through the Vancouver and Burnaby School Boards' adult continuing education programs. Rika earned her Provincial Instructors Diploma Program in 2006.

Rika joined UBC Extended Learning in 2018. She is a well-regarded instructor who is passionate about teaching Japanese language and culture.

Varada Kolhatkar

Varada Kolhatkar, PhD, is an assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Computer Science at UBC. She teaches courses in machine learning, natural language processing and artificial intelligence in the undergraduate and the Master of Data Science programs. Varada has worked in industry as well as in academia in different countries including Canada, the United States, Germany and India. Learn more about Varada.

Anders Kraal

Anders Kraal, PhD, has been a philosophy instructor at UBC since 2015. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral student at the University of Calgary and a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Notre Dame. His research and teaching focuses on early modern philosophy (especially Hume and Kant), and he also has a strong interest in Kierkegaard, existentialism and the problem of evil.

Claudia Krebs

DR. Claudia Krebs, MD, PhD, has been teaching neuroanatomy and gross anatomy to MD undergraduates, biomedical engineering students and allied health professions at UBC for more than a decade.

At UBC, she has worked on integrating technology and novel visual approaches in the classroom. She’s particularly interested in the integration of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), as well as examining the impact of AR and VR on student learning.

In 2017, Dr. Krebs created the HIVE (Hackspace for Innovation and Visualization in Education), a multidisciplinary space for innovation in biomedical education. The HIVE team has created educational extended reality (xR) apps, such as the HoloBrain and the Pocket Pelvis, that have been adapted as learning resources.

Together with UBC colleagues, she has published a neuroscience textbook with a set of accompanying flashcards that’s used in classrooms around the world. With anatomy educators from across UBC and from partner universities, she‘s creating open educational resources for neuroscience and anatomy for the global community, including videos, e-books and interactive web materials. All of these materials are available on two websites she curates, neuroanatomy.ca and clinicalanatomy.ca.

Dr. Krebs has received numerous teaching awards, including the 2018 Killam Teaching Prize.