Who We Are

VICTOR MINCES

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I came to love science and the arts at an early age. By the time I finished high school my love for art continued, but I had been taught that science was a boring set of tedious rules created by a small set of mad geniuses. I enrolled in the School of Fine Arts, where I studied for two years. During that time I gradually became intrigued by the beauty of the physical world and the challenge of understanding it. I playfully signed up to take a couple of courses at the school of Physical Sciences, at the University of Buenos Aires.

Those “couple of courses” turned into a few years of hard and joyful study that took me to a Ph.D. in computational neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego, where I studied how visual and auditory signals are processed in the brain. As a postdoctoral researcher, I was privileged to start putting science and arts together by studying the relationship between music performance and human cognition.

As a scientist I never forgot my school experience and continuously went back to schools, first carrying brains around as a founding member of the neuroscience outreach group, then showing the connections between science and music. Seeing a student’s eyes widen when they see a brain for the first time, or when they first make a connection between a sound and a waveform, has been one of the greatest pleasures of my relationship with science. It is my vision that every child connects with science, at least once in their lives, through the experience of wonder. I think a deep look into music is a great place to start.

Visit my personal website to see my art connecting music and science: www.victorminces.com

ANGELA BOOKER

Angela Booker is currently studying the ways youth, families, and schools make use of media and technology for participation, learning and community development. She is particularly concerned with addressing barriers that diminish access to public participation among underrepresented and disenfranchised communities. She uses ethnographic, qualitative and design-based research methods to examine typical and emerging practices where youth and adults work together (and at times, in conflict). Collaborations with youth, community partners, educators and scholars form the basis of her work.

SUSAN YONEZAWA

Susan Yonezawa is Associate Director of CREATE at the University of California, San Diego. Yonezawa straddles the worlds of policy, practice, and research, working to embed research and design techniques and mindsets into the lived practices and policies of urban public schooling. She analyzes and engages issues of diversity, opportunity, and inequality in schools and communities, with a focus on the district, school and classroom leverage points that can increase college access for underrepresented, low-income students.

Alec Barron is the Director of the San Diego Science Project at UC San Diego CREATE. Through this role, he supports science educator networks, delivers engaging science programs and resources, and builds bridges between researchers and educators through shared learning. In previous roles as a K12 science teacher and administrator, he led the design of new curricula, professional learning, and instructional coaching to support NGSS implementation. As a leader, he is interested in how we develop systems and supports for science educators to continuously improve and innovate as equity designers.

Akshay Nagarajan has worked extensively as an educator, robotics engineer, and designer setting up skill development programs and makerspaces for underserved communities in India. He has shaped the field of vocational education through his pioneering work in virtual reality and haptic simulators for teaching construction skills and livelihood education to women and youth in rural and tribal communities. He has led STEAM and maker education curriculum development and workshops for students and teachers panning over 2000 schools across India. The workshops promoted constructionist learning and frugal innovation, teaching low-tech making, product design, life skills, computational thinking, robotics, data literacy, and artificial intelligence.

At UC San Diego, his research in cognitive science focuses on studying individual differences in learning and novel exploration and takes a cross-species perspective by observing children and macaques. He aims to identify and develop hands-on teaching and learning strategies that can bridge these differences in learning and offer a more equitable learning experience for children. He is creating a data and AI literacy curriculum that includes the Listening to Waves sound exploration tools to foster engagement and inclusive learning.

CHRIS OLIVAS

High Tech High teacher Chris Olivas has been helping LTW to create NGSS-aligned curriculum. He grew up in San Diego spending much of his time on the water. He  went to UCSD to study marine biology and has done some research on sharks at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. He has taught high school and middle school math and science at several High Tech High schools since 2008 .He loves designing projects that allow students to learn new skills and apply them to make authentic work. He is always planning projects around preserving our natural world and our place in it as human beings. He loves to get creative with art, photography, and video inside and outside of school.