Elena Yulaeva
Dr. Elena Yulaeva is the founder and co-director of the Global Forest Link. Elena is an educator with 20+ years experience of teaching courses at different student levels, managing education-focused projects and running education organizations. She holds a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington, and her research interests lie in climate change prediction, mitigation, and adaptation. Integrating her research background and active education project engagements, Dr. Yulaeva works with researchers, experts, teachers, and students across the US and internationally to maintain and enrich the Global Forest Link STEAM education model. Before founding the Global Forest Link, Elena served as an instructor with the UCSD “Living Oceans and Global Climate Change” cluster of the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS), exposing high-school students to introductory oceanography, climate research, and computing.
Yvonne Marie Andres
Dr. Andrés serves as Director of Education and Outreach for Global Forest Link. She is responsible for facilitating collaborative-learning connections, engaging content experts, digital storytelling, and conducting local and global community outreach. Andrés is President/Co-founder of GlobalSchoolNet.org and founder of iPoPP (International Projects or Partners Place.) Andres serves as the US co-chair for the US-Russia Social Expertise Exchange. She is creator of International CyberFair and US State Department’s Doors to Diplomacy programs. Andrés was named one of 25 most influential people worldwide in education technology for her innovative e-learning projects, involving 5 million students from 194 countries. Andrés was awarded the Soroptimist International Making-a-Difference-Award for advancing the status of women and children. In 2012 Andrés was chosen San Diego Magazine’s Women-Who-Move-the-City, recognizing dynamic women who create positive change and contribute to the community. Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Andres
Ilya Zaslavsky
Dr. Zaslavsky is director of Spatial Information Systems Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on distributed information management systems and spatial and temporal data integration. Zaslavsky received his Ph.D. from the University of Washington (1995), and earlier a Ph.D. equivalent from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990). He has been leading design and technical development in several large cyberinfrastructure projects supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, including the national-scale EarthCube and Hydrologic Information System. He is a co-chair of the OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group which develops international standards for water data.
Partners and Contributors
Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Bonnie is an independent educational consultant, one of the first teachers to promote the role of the Internet in the classroom, and a former US-Russia Social Expertise Exchange Fellow. Bonnie served as lead educator on President Bill Clinton’s 21st Century Teacher Initiative. She is also a teacher trained by ESRI in their teacher program and National Geographic in their Teacher Institute. Follow Bonnie on Twitter @bbsutton
Shanti Elliott
Shanti is the Director of Civic Engagement at Francis Parker School in Chicago. She also teaches in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University and co-leads the Teachers’ Inquiry Project. Shanti is a multicultural educator with a 25-year history of designing education for a complex and changing world. Her work includes professional development and teaching focused on leadership, civic education, and relationship building across differences of race, class, culture, and politics.
Leigh Zeitz
Dr. Leigh Zeitz is an associate professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Northern Iowa. He is actively involved in helping classrooms connect around the world so students can share their ideas.
Sébastien Fantini
Sébastien Fantini is a photographer-author, who graduated from the Cinema School of Marseille. The entire universe of his work is connected to the artistic movement of Magic-realism. Sébastien received the prize of “Prix National de Photographie,” recognizing his astonishing work about the miners of Silesia in Poland. Sébastien paid tribute to The Photographers of Barbizon and to their chief Gustave Le Gray through the series “18 Forests ,” a truly original and romantic introspection, which Sébastien says, “embeds the nature at the very heart of the creation.”
Invited Professionals
Dmitry Aksenov
Dr. Dmitry Aksenov is an expert in remote sensing and natural resource management. He is a Director General of “Transparent World”, a non-profit branch of the SCANEX corporation, which is engaged in various conservation, environmental monitoring and education projects utilizing GIS, satellite images and internet technologies. Under his leadership “Transparent World” has become a valuable knowledge resource for environmental NGOs, national parks staff and state environmental organizations, internationally and in Russia. “Transparent World” partners with NGO’s and governmental organizations in a number of international projects including the Global Forest Watch (GFW), which was launched earlier this year. GFW, a multi-agency project led by the World Resources Institute (WRI), is an online mapping application that provides near-real time, reliable, and actionable data about what is happening in forests worldwide.
Rose Hanscom
Rose is in her thirty-sixth year at Francis Parker Upper School. She taught all levels of Chemistry for years and is presently teaching AP Environmental Science and AP Biology. She continues in her seventeenth year of coaching Science Olympiad for the Parker Upper School. Rose earned a B.S and M.S in Biology and her California teaching credential at California State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. She earlier taught a class in Human Microbiology at California State University in San Bernardo, CA. Rose was an AP Table Leader and Question Leader for AP Chemistry for fourteen years. Earlier, she was on the SAT II test writing committee for Chemistry. Rose has two children and three grandsons. She enjoys reading and observing nature.
Marianna Gorelova
Dr. Gorelova graduated from Moscow State University with a Ph.D. in Physics. She worked as a researcher in Moscow for fifteen years and at the University of Rio De Janeiro for four years. After moving to America, Marianna received an education in applied arts. She is currently a contract artist and a specialist in ceramic painting. Her work was published in the encyclopedia “Russian Painting” and is showcased by the La Jolla Art Association.
Katia Metelizza (Ekaterina Metelitsa)
Katia is a writer. She is the author of “Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy”, “Dame of Spades by Alex Pushkin” – graphic novels. “My life Alphabet”, “Puff Sugar” (“Candy-floss”? – “Cахарная вата”), “Loev” (Lbuov, “Лбюовь”), “Provincial town M”, “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” – books of lifestyle essays and short stories. “Louise Lozhkina’s Dairy” – a sort of novel. “Il Nuovo Abbecedario Russo” – selected essays in Italian, Spanish and French. Katia is also a travel and environmental journalist and a popular blogger. She is deeply interested in gastronomy and recently launched a mobile application: Veget Table with her recommendations for vegetarians in Moscow.