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Teaching and organizing the courses
Teaching
Field courses, practicals and lectures
Teaching is one of the parts of my work I enjoy most. Over sixteen years I have taught around a dozen regular courses — roughly eight at universities (in Jena and Moscow) and five at marine biological stations, the White Sea (Russia), Roscoff (France), Espegrend (Norway), and Helgoland (Germany, as a guest course for the University of Kiel) — where students work hands-on with living marine animals in the field.
The balance is deliberately spread across levels: about half are introductory courses for first- and second-year Bachelor’s students (basic zoology, biodiversity, scientific illustration), and about half are advanced courses for Master’s and specialist students (comparative morphology, embryology and development, and an advanced course dedicated to the Siboglinidae).
One commitment I am especially proud of is ZooClub, a weekly workshop at the Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Moscow State University, that I have kept running every week since 2007 — eighteen years — introducing school students to the animal world through lectures and hands-on practicals. It has reached more than a thousand young people, with 20–30 students in each session (and more than 100 applications in some years). Since 2020 it run online, but Russian-speaking children anywhere could join.
Organisation of courses and workshops
Alongside teaching, I organise scientific courses, workshops and conference sections that bring students and early-career researchers together with experts in the field — something I value because early direct contact with specialists shaped my own path.
Lomonosov conference (Moscow State University)
For over a decade I helped run the “Lomonosov” international conference for young researchers at Moscow State University. I chaired the Invertebrate Zoology subsection across many years (2015–2021), and earlier served as Responsible Secretary of the large Biology Section (2011–2013), coordinating the programme for 500–700 young scientists each year. My aim was to bring together a committee of leading scientists and the best educators for the young researchers, and to give them feedback on how to improve their experiments, studies, and presentations.
Morphology course in Jena
At the University of Jena I teach and coordinate morphology courses for Bachelor’s and Master’s students. These include an advanced course on the morphology, development and evolution of invertebrates, and the Master’s course “Morphology: questions, methods, application perspectives,” which pairs morphological and molecular data — from light microscopy, confocal microscopy and electron microscopy through to single-cell sequencing analysis — to show how the same structure can be studied with a whole spectrum of complementary approaches.
International courses on development and morphology
I co-organise and teach international courses on the embryology of marine invertebrates, which bring students from many countries to the White Sea to study marine development hands-on (see the second and third editions). The same interest in development and marine biology carries into the embryology courses I now teach at the Roscoff and Helgoland marine stations.
In comparative anatomy, I co-organised an international workshop on the comparative anatomy of invertebrates as a satellite of the 4th International Congress on Invertebrate Morphology (ICIM-4), pairing lectures with practical, specimen-based sessions.
I have also contributed as an instructor and assistant to international courses at the White Sea Biological Station, including Comparative and Functional Neuroanatomy and Neurobiology of Invertebrates and the International Polychaete Course.