Jimmy Fraigne, PhD
Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream
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My teaching focuses on promoting scientific literacy through active learning. I believe that scientific literacy helps students develop their critical thinking skills, knowledge, and curiosity. I integrate experiential learning in data science to my teaching, to give hands-on experience to students. I am recently exploring the use of generative AI to improve learning experiences for all students and creating tools for AI-assisted coding. Finally, I strive to create an inclusive and engaging learning environment that makes students feel at ease. Below are the courses I teach at both the undergraduate and graduate level! |
Undergraduate Courses
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New this Fall 2025!
The scale and complexity of biological data are fast expanding as biotechnology develops. How are we going to process and interpret large-scale data? Using example-based approaches in the context of behavioural neuroscience (e.g., sleep, movement, learning, decision-making), this course aims to bridge biology and computational analysis techniques. Through lectures and hands-on sessions, students will learn about modern methodology in neuroscience (e.g., electrophysiology, optogenetics, calcium imaging) and how to analyze neural data sets. Students will be introduced to programming in MATLAB tailored for neuroscience, signal processing, image processing, statistical analysis, and machine learning techniques. By developing practical skills through various neural data types (e.g., EEG, EMG, Ca2+ Imaging), this course equips students with the skills to handle neural data, basic computational approaches in neuroscience, and a quantitative understanding of brain functionality. |
New this Fall 2025!
This course will cover fundamental theories on the regulation, evolution, and function of sleep-wake states – how and why animals sleep. Sleep is a behavioural state that occurs in all vertebrates and it has also been identified in several species of invertebrates. In these animals, sleep is associated with profound changes in physiological function at the molecular, cellular and system levels. Furthermore, sleep has marked implications for the neurobiology of behaviour and the evolution of organisms because of the impact it has on cognitive function, memory consolidation, and overall health. The course will be integrative and comparative, linking together concepts from all levels of biological organization (molecular to whole organism) and drawing examples from a variety of different animals.
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The primary aim of the course is to highlight how breathing is generated and regulated by both the central and peripheral nervous systems. We will discuss these topics from molecular, cellular, and systems levels. An emphasis will be placed on the control of breathing during both health and disease.
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This course will discuss theories on the function and regulation in both health and disease. The discussion will focus on current questions and controversies within the field of sleep research. Emphasis is placed on the critical evaluation of concepts, assumptions, data, and interpretations. |
Graduate Courses
This course aims to review the latest neuroscience methods and how they can be used to reveal how the nervous system controls behaviours such as sleep, daily rhythms, breathing, motivation and movement.
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