Claudia Krebs
Professor of Teaching
MD, PhD (Cologne, Germany)
Email: claudia.krebs@ubc.ca
Office: 604-827-5694
Dr. Krebs teaches both gross anatomy and neuroanatomy for a broad range of students: in the MD undergraduate program, allied health professions and biomedical engineering.She is the principal author of Lippincott’s Illustrated Reviews: Neuroscience and the accompanying Flashcard set.
Use of videos and e-tutorials in neuroanatomy & gross anatomy education
When Dr. Krebs experienced the struggles medical students have with complex materials her neuroanatomy classroom, she explored innovative ways to address these struggles. She took the basic concept of a blended learning environment, which allowed her to distill complex neuroanatomical functional relationships into 10-minute video clips. Far from being short recordings of her lectures, she combined an artistic vision with the scientific concepts: by combining a solid script with stunning visuals ranging from superb dissections to cartoons, underscored by a soundtrack that pulls the entire video together. These videos are accompanied by e-tutorials to provide a learning resource through which students can acquire their neuroscience knowledge at their own pace.
The fear of neuroanatomy or neuroscience has been coined “neurophobia” and Dr. Krebs has been working with her team to provide easily accessible and understandable resources for students to overcome this apprehension.
Dr. Krebs has developed similar high quality resources for Head and Neck anatomy and is currently in the process of developing more for all aspects of human anatomy. Of particular note is the fact that all of these resources are being developed in interprofessional teams including all health professions and with undergraduate students as co-producers.
Related web links
How to make education more accessible
Academic Youtube star sparks worldwide learning
MedIT Ed Tech – Testimonial – Dr. Claudia Krebs
UBC Medicine Magazine (Spring 2014)
“Nerd-chic” professor teaches neuroanatomy in snazzy med school videos
Now streaming: UBC’s distinctive lens on neuroanatomy
Sectra Table – Anatomy Visualization Table / Integration of Anatomy and Radiology
In order to integrate clinical approaches and relevance to the gross anatomy classroom, Dr. Krebs teamed up with her colleagues from the Department of Radiology to create an integrated gross anatomy / radiological anatomy curriculum. Again, the use of technology played a prominent role in this integration. The Sectra Visualization Table was introduced to the gross anatomy labs in 2016; this technology allows for students to explore clinical cases in 3D reconstructions of CT scans on a large touch screen monitor.
In addition, a radiology app was developed by the radiology team to make radiology education mobile.
Related web links
Virtual dissection: Med students get new tool
Virtual anatomy tool helping first year UBC medical students learn
New tool for medical students’ anatomy lessons – a virtual scalpel
UBC med school is teaching anatomy on a giant Swedish “iPad”
HoloLens Lecture for neuroanatomy / Virtual anatomy 3D reconstructions
One of the more difficult aspects of neuroanatomy in particular, is to obtain a 3-dimensional understanding of how structures are arranged in the CNS. Targeted dissections can only provide a snapshot of one particular aspect of one particular structure and cross sectional anatomy as seen in brain slices or CT and MRI scans, requires a good 3-dimensional understanding for orientation and ultimately diagnostic approach.
Dr. Krebs has collaborated with engineers and undergraduate interns with Microsoft Garage internship program as well as graduate students within the Faculty of Medicine to develop an interactive, 3-dimensional, augmented reality (AR) app for the HoloLens.
The focus of this project is on developing a technology that will have a measurable impact in the classroom. The use of AR and virtual reality (VR) in education will most likely expand over the next years and these technologies will need to find their place in the ever-evolving learning ecosystem of medical education.
Related web links
Mixed reality enhances neuroanatomy studies at UBC
Mixed reality gives neuroanatomy lessons a boost
UBC students can now study the human brain using holograms
Mixed reality gives neuroanatomy lessons a boost
Women in Science
- Chanpong B, Tang R, Sawka A, Krebs C, Vaghadia H. (2013) Real-time ultrasonographic visualization for guided inferior alveolar nerve injection. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol. 115(2):272-6.
- French L, Lane S, Xu L, Siu C, Kwok C, Chen Y, Krebs C, Pavlidis P. (2012) Application and evaluation of automated method to extract neuroanatomical connectivity statements from free text. Bioinformatics 28 (22): 2963-70.
- Kaur B, Tang R, Sawka A, Krebs C, Vaghadia H. (2012) Brief Report: A method for unltrasonographic visualization and injection of the superior laryngeal nerve: Volunteer study and cadaver simulation. Anesth Analg. 115 (5):1242-5.
- Lee PJ, Tang R, Sawka A, Krebs C, Vaghadia H. (2011) Brief Report: Real-Time Ultrasound-Guided Spinal Anesthesia Using Taylor’s Approach. Anesth Analg. 112 (5): 1286-8.
Further publications can be found here.
2017-2018 UBC Killam Teaching Prize in the Faculty of Medicine
2017 highly commended for Medea Award for Educational Media
2016 Medical Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award, awarded by the MD Undergraduate class of 2018
2016 Medical Undergraduate Teaching Excellence Award, awarded by the MD Undergraduate class of 2017
2016 highly commended for Medea Award for Educational Media
2015 Honorary Member of the Swedish Society for Anatomy
2015 Universitas 21 Visiting Scholar Award at Lund University, Sweden
2015 Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Education, awarded by the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
2014 Medical Undergraduate Society Teaching Excellence Award, awarded by the MD Undergraduate class of 2016
2012 Departmental Teaching Award, awarded by the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences
2010 CAME Certificate of Merit Award, awarded by the Canadian Association for Medical Education
2008 Distinguished Achievement Award for Excellence in Education, awarded by the Dean’s Office, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia
Krebs, C (2009) Evaluation of a comprehensive neuroanatomy website in a distributed medical curriculum. AAA meeting abstract New Orleans April 2009.
Wilson, J and Krebs, C (2008) 3D-reconstruction of CNS Structures Derived from MRI Scans: New Teaching Tools for Neuroanatomy. AAA meeting abstract San Diego April 2008.
Krebs C, Fernandes HB, Sheldon C, Huxtable A, El-Husseini A, Raymond LA, Baimbridge KG (2003) Functional NMDA receptors in post-ischemia astrocytes – a possible synaptic target? Elsner N, Zimmermann H (eds): Gottingen Neurobiology Report 2003: Proceedings of the 29th Gottingen Neurobiology Conference. Georg Thieme, Stuttgart New York, abstract 52.
Zeron MM, Shehadeh, J, Krebs C, Wellington CL, Leavitt B, Baimbridge KG, Hayden MR, Raymond LA (2002) Downstream effects of NMDA receptor-overactivation in striatal neurons from a YAC Mouse model of Huntington Disease. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 92.16.
Krebs C, Rintoul GL, Li B, Raymond LA, Baimbridge KG (2002) Calbindin-D28k protects hippocampal neurons from excitotoxic damage by precenting Ca2+ induced mitochondrial membrane depolarization. 7th European Symposium on Calcium binding Proteins in Normal and Transformed Cells. Brussels 2002.
Krebs C, Fernandes HB, Sheldon C, Li B, Raymond LA, Baimbridge KG (2002) Astrocytes express a functional NMDA receptor subtype 2B following anoxia/ischemia both in vivo and in vitro. Canadian Physiological Society Meeting, Vernon, B.C. January 2002.
Zeron MM, Wellington CL, Krebs C, Leavitt B, Baimbridge KG, Hayden MR, Raymond LA (2001) N-Methyl-D-Aspartate receptor-mediated excitotoxicity in a transgenic mouse model of Huntington’s Disease. Soc. Neurosci Abstr. 432.2.
Krebs C, Fernandes HB, Li B, Raymond LA, Baimbridge KG (2001) NMDA-receptor subtype 2B is expressed in astroglia following anoxia/ischemia in vivo and in vitro. Elsner N, Kreutzberg GW (eds): Gottingen Neurobiology Report 2001: Proceedings of the 28th Gottingen Neurobiology Conference. Georg Thieme, Stuttgart New York, p 295.
Li B, Rintoul GL, Krebs C, Baimbridge KG, Raymond LA (2000) Modulation of neuronal NMDA receptor activigy by calbindin-28K. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 806.2.
Zeron MM, Wellington CL, Leavitt B, Krebs C, Baimbridge KG, Hayden MR, Raymond, LA (2000) Mutant huntingtin enhances excitotoxic cell death in a transgenicv mouse model of Huntington’s disease. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 382.16.
Krebs C, Rintoul GL, Li B, Raymond LA, Baimbridge KG (2000) Effects of adenoviral transfected calbindin-d28K in fetal hippocampal neurons. Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 377.11.