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Workshop Instructors

Rollie Otto is Acting Teacher Academy Director for the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics at UC Berkeley. Rollie retired as a scientist and educator from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he was director of the Center for Science and Engineering Education. Dr. Otto was the Executive Director of the University of California statewide teacher professional development program - the California Science Project, and Assistant Director of the Lawrence Hall of Science. He held a variety of research and management positions at Berkeley Lab, including Staff Scientist and Assistant Division Head of the Energy and Environment Division.

Laurie Kerrigan is a physics teacher at Mercy High School in San Francisco. She wrote her own major in Physiological Chemistry at UC Davis and has a Masters in Special Education. For the last 5 years she has helped develop the Universe Adventure website, which is designed to explain the history of the universe to physics students and the general public. Her physics students test the website each year. She loves the out of doors and helps students discover the
wonders of nature with trips to Yosemite.

Stewart Loken received his Ph.D. in High Energy Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1971. Currently, he is a Senior Scientist and Deputy Director of the Physics Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.  His research interests include the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and studies of nearby Type Ia Supernovae.  Additionally, he is the Lead for the QuarkNet program at Berkeley Lab.

Dick Damian I started out as a metallurgist at Engine Engineering at Ford Motor Company in the ancient past. I was a senior scientist at Nasa Ames and a staff scientist at IBM scientific center in Palo Alto. Worked on artificial intelligence routines for magnet maintenance at CERN. If you ever fly out of Atlanta airport, I helped write some of the radar code. I am now an aging engineer/scientist and amateur teacher - currently physics/engineering teacher at George Washington High School. I am also the sponsor for our school's robot club. Habitat for Humanity and electro-mechanics are my hobbies. My personal skills have not been excessively damaged by a career in science.

Glen Melnik received a BA at University of California, Santa Barbara, and a Masters at Northwestern University. He presently teaches math and physics at Piedmont High School.  For the last 10 years, he has been teaching physics at Piedmont High.  Before that, he developed a successful private tutoring service in math, chemistry, and physics on the high school level. For the last 5 years, he has been an active participate in QuartNet, an organization whose purpose is to educate high school physics teachers in the area of cutting edge particle physics. Besides working on math and physics problems, Glen has been teaching sailing at Cass’ Marina sailing school for the last nine years.

Neha Gupta is pursuing her M.S. in Electrical Engineering at Purdue
University. She received her B.Tech. with Honors in Electronics and
Communication Engineering from Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha
University, India. Her primary area of research is Wireless Technology
and Mobile Communication. She is also interested in K-12 Engineering Education with focus on analyzing the role of mobile technology in STEM learning and teaching in the developing countries. Here is the link to her website:
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~gupta56

Miles  Chen Received a BA in Astrophysics, Physics, and Studio Art from UC Berkeley. He was a Graduate Student Instructor and Researcher at UC Berkeley in the Physics and Astrophysics Departments for 7 years and helped develop curriculum for the Physics 7 series courses at UC Berkeley. He was a High School Teacher 5 years and a member of the founding faculty at The Bay School of San Francisco teaching Physics, Chemistry, Astrophysics, Drawing and Painting.

Rich Lohman Rich Lohman is a retired math-science teacher.  He taught at Albany High School for 32 years, most recently teaching physics and astronomy.  Currently he trains teachers and students in the “Hands-On Universe” program.  He is also building a small astronomical observatory at his home in Marin County.

Rodger Johnson
Sean Fottrell
Kris Whelan