Meet Dr Jia Li
What course do you teach on and what is your role?
I am the Stream lead & a Lecturer for the Microbiome in Health and Disease stream on the MRes in Biomedical Research. 
How has your career led you to teaching?
I am a Senior Lecturer and leading a research team consisting of postdoctoral researchers, PhD students, master students, undergraduate students and research visitors. While my role is very much research-orientated, I felt designing and teaching these research topics is a great way to bridge the research and the basic knowledge that students learn at the universities.
What aspect of the course do you enjoy teaching the most?
I enjoy teaching the lectures, journal clubs and the debate-based session throughout the MRes year. In particular, the debate-based session is the most enjoyable session since it is very rewarding for me to see how students use the scientific evidence and their critical thinking skills to debate a real research topic.
What do you hope your students will go on to achieve on completion of this course?
Previous students who have graduated from this course have continued to PhD studies or working in industry and academia. It is great to see this MRes course has helped them to further their studies and career.
What is your favorite part about teaching at Imperial College London?
At Imperial College, we use a mixture of different teaching methods, such as flipped classroom, workshops, journal clubs, etc. These teaching methods encourage the communication between the students and the lecturers and make the class much more interactive.