Tremaine Visiting Speaker Series for Women in Science: Keynote Address

Ditch the Recipe, Keep the Science: Open-Ended Laboratory Learning for Discovery

How do you take a traditional, verification lab and it make it open-ended and skills-based? In this session, Dr. Natasha G. Holmes will present big ideas from her discipline-based educational research exploring the restructuring of labs to focus on experimental skills, concepts, and understandings, rather than on verifying known principles.

Meet our 2026 Tremaine Speaker

Natasha G. Holmes is the Ann S. Bowers Associate Professor at Cornell University and an alumna of the University of Guelph, where she completed her undergraduate degree in physics. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia and postdoctoral work at Stanford University. She is a leader in physics education research, where her work focuses on transforming undergraduate laboratory courses to better support scientific reasoning, experimentation, and model‑based thinking. Drawing on both disciplinary training and education research, Dr. Holmes studies how students learn through lab work and how course design and assessment can improve learning outcomes and student experiences, with equity and inclusion treated as foundational elements of effective learning environments.

About the Tremaine Speaker Series

The Tremaine Visiting Speaker for Women in Science was created by a generous donation from the Tremaine family. The purpose is to bring the world’s brightest scientific women scholars and policy makers, such as:

• Female scientists pursuing innovative research.
• A researcher or professor who has pushed the boundaries for women in science.
• An individual with experience in setting public policy which serves to remove barriers for women pursuing higher education and careers in STEM.

The series launched in October of 2023 and will continue annually with a new department from the College of Computational, Mathematical, and Physical Sciences (CCMPS) hosting.