She did her graduate work in microbial genetics at the University of Chicago, followed by a post-doc in human genetics. After several years in a research track, where most of her time was spent training undergraduates to do molecular genetics research, she realized that her real passion lies in teaching and trying to understand how students learn biology. This new avenue of research is supported by a group of faculty at RIT who share an interest in discipline-based education research (SMERC). Dina currently teaches Cell Biology and Molecular Biology (two sophomore-level gateway courses, and Human Genetics (an upper level elective). She has also been involved in developing freshman biology labs and a freshman seminar course. She tries to incorporate evidence-based teaching methods in her courses as much as possible.