Our instructors

Lena Ignatovich

Roma Ilnyckyj

Roma Ilnyckyj, MA, is a Certified Professional Editor with extensive experience in all levels of editing and proofreading. She works for Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, where she edits the coursework and exams that people take to become accountants. In the past, she’s also edited material for non-profit organizations, government, small presses, independent authors and academics. Roma has held a number of roles with the Editors’ Association of Canada (Editors Canada), at both the national and local levels, including planning and facilitating study groups for professional certification exams.

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 Associate Professor of Teaching in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia. She teaches applied machine learning, natural language processing, and artificial intelligence in UBC’s undergraduate and Master of Data Science programs. Her teaching focuses on making complex AI and machine learning concepts accessible, practical, and relevant to real-world problems. Varada brings experience from both academia and industry and has worked in Canada, the United States, Germany, and India. She was recently awarded UBC’s Killam Teaching Prize in recognition of excellence in teaching and contributions to student learning.