Our Team
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Winston has a diverse background from architectural design to assembly language programming and experience from writing video games to managing development of financial software. He has tutored adults and kids on and off for years in computer use, web design, and graphics programming. He has taught computer and robotics summer camps at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (2006), and at the Lawrence Hall of Science (2004), part of the University of California at Berkeley. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1989, studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with minor studies in art. Prior to forming Stratolab, Winston was Chief Technical Officer at EuropeLoan Bank (1999-2002) an internet bank, based in Europe. Winston was the internet development manager at Scientific Learning Corporation (1997-99), an educational software company, makers of speech therapy software based on brain plasticity research at University of California at San Francisco and neuroscience and hearing disorder research at Rutgers University. He used his blend of aesthetic and engineering expertise as a user interface and tools programmer at Lucas Arts Entertainment (1992-96) and Spectrum HoloByte/MicroProse (1991-92), where he developed video games including the popular Star Wars™ titles Dark Forces and Jedi Knight.
Steve teaches physics and computer science at a public high school in Northern California. He has been teaching in public schools and for non-profits for over 16 years. After graduating from University of Colorado in Boulder in 1995, he worked as a software developer in the Bay Area, but always knew that the classroom was his calling. He went back to school to earn a Master's degree in science education, and he is pretty darn happy to be a teacher. He is fascinated with the learning process and how humans organize their conceptual understanding of the world, specifically the physical world. Steve is interested in helping students create cohesive models for describing physical phenomena and has become increasingly interested in how computer simulations (and more importantly authoring those simulations through computer code) can help students connect abstract rules of behavior to actual experienced observations. He designed and currently teaches in two project based academies where he gets to teach in a way that he wishes he had been taught.
Alisa studied philosophy for over a decade, first as an undergraduate and masters student at the University at Buffalo and then as a doctoral student at The Ohio State University. Her background includes a variety of topics including classical and non-classical logics, value theory, early modern philosophy, and the logical constraints of rationality. She recently discovered programming was the perfect outlet for her love of deductive inference and abstract reasoning. For the past year, she has been learning web development and especially enjoys working on problems that have solutions for a change. In her free time, she likes to contribute to open source projects.
Jeremy has been helping to create new technologies for 25 years. He has worked in a broad range of environments using many methodologies, but prefers to work with small teams utilizing Agile practices. Jeremy loves good design and enjoys working with passionate collaborators. Shortly after graduating from University of California with degrees in Philosophy and Mechanical Engineering, Jeremy moved to San Francisco and joined his first software startup. He found that working with code provided a level of creative freedom not possible in the physical world, and pursued a career in software development. After jobs at Apple, and several more startups he honed his development skills in Java before eventually shifting into web development. At Carbon Five he learned the full stack of web technologies and switched to Ruby on Rails as a primary development platform. Currently Jeremy runs a small software development consultancy with Winston Wolff, and is turning his focus to mobile application development. Together with Steve and Winston, Jeremy is exploring ways to create new technology for education. Jeremy has always planned to pursue a second career as a math and science teacher. But he hasn’t yet figured out how to extricate himself from the world of tech.
An experiment on learning physics through computation, inspired by a conversation with a and
Their physics textbook is based on this idea, and here is a short