New teachers from Iowa, Boston and LA added to SimInsights network

SimInsights welcomes three new teachers to our growing community!

Leif Nabil Segen

School: South Hamilton High School, Jewell, Iowa

Notables: Phi Beta Kappa member and Summa Cum Laude graduate from Rutgers University (B.S. Physics & Ed.M. Physics Education). Team coach for 2011 first-place winners of Toshiba-NSTA ExploraVision competition.

Leif decided to be an educator during at year off from his undergraduate work. He lived in Saint Kitts and Nevis, West Indies, where his volunteering included curriculum development for Ministry of Education. Inspired by his experiences, he returned to university with the intention to apply his aptitude in math and science in the field of education. He has since taught science and math at the middle school, high school, and university levels. Leif wishes to foster emerging paradigms that will allow education systems to meet their charge: helping children and youth develop their abilities of evaluation and collaborative innovation.

Anna Karelina

School: Occidental College and Glendale Community College, CA

Anna Karelina studied condensed matter physics at Bayreuth University (Germany),earning a PhD degree before turning her attention to education. She worked in PhysicsEducation Research group at Rutgers University conducting action-research projectswith investigative inquiry-based learning. Since then she worked at Glendale CommunityCollege and Occidental College developing and revising inquiry-based instructions.

Allison Daubert

School: Hopewell Valley Central High School, Pennington, NJ

Notables: B.S. Physics and Meteorology, M.Ed. Science Education

Allison is enthusiastic about researching and developing student directed inquiry techniques for learning in her classroom. She is always looking for new ways to integrate technology such as videos, simulations, and data collection software into methods her students can use to actively investigate physics.

SimInsights developing surgical suturing training simulator

SimInsights is developing a surgical suturing training simulator in collaboration with researchers from Texas A&M University and with support from Qatar Foundation. This training simulator will allow medical students to perfect suturing skills using computer simulation. Alternative training approaches involve practicing on cadavers which are not always available and oranges, which are not realistic. The project will use high fidelity simulation techniques, real time computation, 3D computer graphics techniques and interfacing with high sampling rate haptic devices to provide a fully immersive experience to allow students to build dexterous manipulation skills in a safe environment at a very low cost.