Claire Gordy

North Carolina State University

Claire Gordy is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on cultivating inclusive learning environments in the college biology classroom through the incorporation of tactile teaching tools and the development of authentic course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs). Through an Elementary Genetics CURE at NCSU, she co-mentors 240 undergraduate researchers working to characterize stress tolerance phenotypes in novel wild yeast strains each academic year. This work has involved the development of straightforward techniques for quantitative mid-throughput screening of genetic fitness that can be consistently performed by beginning undergraduate researchers. Outside of the classroom, her research focuses on understanding connections between autophagy and other cellular responses. Prior to her current position, she studied connections between the G protein-coupled receptor-mediated pheromone pathway and autophagy in S. cerevisiae as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, and the roles of autophagy and apoptosis in the development and homeostasis of the immune system as a PhD student in the Department of Immunology at Duke University.