Biophysical Society Bulletin | September 2025

Publications

The Biophysicist : Innovation in Biophysics Requires Innovation in How We Educate Biophysicists

A decade ago, a BPS Travel Award changed the course of my professional life. It gave me my first chance, as a faculty member, to attend the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Before that, I could not afford to go; juggling a young family, learning to navigate US teaching practices, and working to build my academic capital left no room for conference travel. That experience planted a seed: advancing science is not only about discovery, it is about making knowledge creation, dissemination, and acquisition accessible to all. Today, as a novice academic administrator, this lesson drives my com mitment to building systems that open doors for the next generation of undergraduate researchers. Biophysics thrives on innovation and discovery; yet, too often, students lack access to the tools and opportunities needed to become part of that endeavor. The interdisciplinary nature of the field demands intellectual agility: students must learn to navigate multiple ways of thinking, problem solving, and approaching science. Traditional teaching models, often inher ited from single-discipline settings, struggle to prepare stu dents for this challenge. As a result, many talented students risk being left behind. To address these shortcomings, we need deliberate, evi dence-based approaches to teaching and mentoring. The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in biophysics brings the same rigor we value in biophysics research to questions about how students learn; how they engage with complex, interdisciplinary problems; and how research expe riences shape their growth. Studies in SoTL generate evidence that can improve curriculum design, guide mentoring practic es, and strengthen research training, ensuring that students not only learn biophysics concepts but also that they develop the habits of mind and scientific practices that define bio physics as a discipline. Our community faces important questions that dedicated SoTL in biophysics can answer. Among them: • How is learning biophysics distinct from learning physics, math, chemistry, or biology? • How does learning biophysics progress from K–12 through graduate school? • How can emerging digital technologies, including genera tive AI, enhance teaching and learning in biophysics? • What evidence-based approaches can make active learn ing effective for students with varied backgrounds while ensuring that these strategies are practical and sustain able for instructors? • What frameworks or approaches can help practitioners adapt SoTL outcomes to diverse classroom realities, recognizing that teaching and learning are context- dependent social processes?

Addressing these questions does not mean every biophysicist must become an education researcher. Our field advances most effectively when those with interest, bandwidth, skills, and/or institutional support contribute strategically to this body of work. Their efforts, when shared, become a collec tive resource that benefits far more students than any single classroom or lab can reach. This is where BPS’s The Biophysicist journal plays a pivotal role. Publishing contributions on innovative teaching practic es, curricular development, mentoring studies, and education research gives others tools to build on proven approaches rather than starting from scratch. Each published study or case report adds to a growing library of methods, frame works, and insights that collectively strengthen biophysics education. Establishing The Biophysicist was an important step toward building the infrastructure needed to support SoTL in biophys ics. Publications are only one part of what is needed. We also need professional development opportunities, communities of practice, and recognition and reward systems that make these contributions visible and valued. With these supports in place, engaging in SoTL becomes less of an isolated effort and more of a collective enterprise. Even those who do not direct ly conduct education research gain access to resources they can adapt, creating a stronger, more connected ecosystem for training the next generation of biophysicists. The vitality of biophysics depends not only on groundbreaking discoveries but also on how well we prepare future scientists for the complex, interdisciplinary challenges ahead. By gen erating evidence, resources, and strategies for teaching and mentoring, SoTL creates pathways for students who might otherwise be excluded from our field. When some of us con tribute this knowledge, the benefits ripple outward, shaping the future of biophysics itself. The invitation is clear: if you have the capacity to engage in education scholarship, your work can help shape the future of biophysics. Platforms like The Biophysicist ensure that no one has to do this alone. Together, we can create a stron ger, more connected, and more sustainable foundation for educating current students and future scientists, ensuring that every learner has a fair chance to thrive in our discipline. At the same time, this vision raises important questions for our community: How should education scholarship be valued in the biophysics community? What responsibilities do we collectively bear for expanding access to opportunities in biophysics? How do we balance innovative teaching with the realities of faculty workload? These are debates worth having if we are serious about building a field where no potential biophysicist is left without a path into our community. — Patricia Soto , Associate Editor, The Biophysicist

September 2025

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