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ESSK Staff

Long Island’s Premier Science Camp For Ages 6-11

Stacey Susinno

Director and Computer Science Instructor

Stacey inspires and motivates all of our Science Campers each day. She has taught Earth Science in the Port Washington school district for 7 years and has a Masters in Educational Technology. Stacey is currently involved in helping to revise and write new laboratory experiences for the Next Generation Science Standards. She looks forward to inspiring new makers with our rich STEAM curriculum!

 

Tina White

Science Instructor

Tina has been a part of the Park Shore family for over 12 years.  During this time she has worn many hats, including Toddler Counselor, Toddler Group Leader, bus driver, and most recently she was one of the faces greeting parents in the Director’s Office.  Tina has truly found her home at ESSK and is so happy to be a part of such a prominent program. During the school year, Tina teaches Science at Park Shore Country Day School and enjoys being able to expand on what she already loves.

Matthew Robbinson

Snappy XO and Arduino Instructor

Matt is a Stony Brook engineering student going into the third year of his education. He is very enthusiastic about learning and is always motivated to teach all of his students as much as he can in the most fun ways as possible. He has over four years of teaching experience and has taught children, teenagers, and adults a variety of subjects and skills including water safety, mathematics, computer programming, and more. He is thrilled to have the opportunity to give all of the students at the Extreme Steam Science program a fun and exciting summer, as well as a multitude of very important engineering skills involving electronics, computers, physical mechanisms, and robotics!

Renee Williamson

Dash Robotics Instructor

Renee has been an educator for 21 years, starting as a Teacher Assistant then becoming a Social Studies teacher. She is a Special Education advocate and mentor of middle and high school students. She recently received her 2nd Masters of Education in Social Studies from NYIT in Westbury. She has been an employee of the Wyandanch School District for 13 years.  

Renee is also a mother of 6, and a grandmother of 1. She enjoys working with children at all levels and being adventurous!

Arthur Grygoryan

Engineering Instructor

Arthur Grygoryan, a graduate of Otis College of Art and Design, is a toy designer who specializes in creating and facilitating STEAM-driven experiences for kids of all ages, by encouraging the use of design thinking and making to build 21st-century skills, from solving every-day problems to making wacky contraptions! You get to ideate, make, and experiment in a fun and engaging environment where play rules!

 

Lori Woessner

Artistic Design Instructor

Lori has been part of the Park Shore family for 8 years. Lori started with us as a Pre-K teacher assistant. For the last three years, she has been the lead teacher of a preschool class and is the after school art teacher. This is her first year in the Extreme STEAM Science camp. She is excited to share her love for art with the STEAM campers.

Anurag Purwar

Curriculum Advisor

Dr. Purwar received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his B. Tech from IIT Kanpur, both in Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are in the machine design area with a focus on the kinematic design of robots and mechanisms, CAD/CAM, and application of Computational Geometry, Virtual Reality (VR), Computer Graphics, and Visualization in Design Engineering.

Dr. Purwar’s research work has been published in several international journals and conferences and he is the recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Teaching by Stony Brook University. His work on the interactive dimensional synthesis of planar 6R mechanisms won him the best paper award at the 2009 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC). He was one of the eight presenters invited from around the world to give a lecture on the topic of Quaternions and Clifford Algebras at the Kinematics Summer School for Ph.D. students and early-career faculty and organized by the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee in Buffalo, NY, 2014.

He has been twice elected as a member of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics committee and served as the Program Chair for the 2014 ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, as the Conference Chair for the 2015 ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Conference, and has served as symposium and session chairs for many ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences. He is the general Conference Co-Chair for the 2016 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC/CIE).

Dr. Purwar is also the department’s representative to the NY state-funded Strategic Partnership for Industrial Resurgence (SPIR) program. As the SPIR representative, he identifies and coordinates projects between the department and Long Island-based industries. SPIR projects include joint proposals for federal funding, manufacturing and quality assurance improvements, research and development, and testing and evaluation.

He won a SUNY Research Foundation Technology Accelerator Fund (TAF) award, which enabled him to develop a multifunctional Sit-to-Stand-Walker assistive device for people afflicted with neuromuscular degenerative diseases or disability. The technology and the patent behind the device have been licensed to Biodex Medical Systems for bringing the device to the institutional market. In 2014, Dr. Purwar gave an invited TEDx talk on Machine Design Innovation through Technology and Education which focused on enabling the democratization of design capabilities, much needed for invention and innovation of machines by uniting the teaching of scientific and engineering principles with the new tools of technology.

Chris Regini

Consultant

Chris is a passionate STEAM educator that empowers students to build skill sets that make them future-ready problem solvers. With a degree in physics from the University of Connecticut, he has spent 15 years in the Half Hollow Hills school district dedicating himself to changing the way students experience science. He uses a flipped model of instruction that allows for an immersive array of project-based learning. Chris’s students are producers of technology instead of mere consumers. 3D printing, stop animation, augmented reality and social media are among the tools that he uses to change the dynamic of how students learn. As a Raspberry Pi certified instructor, he incorporates physical computing and IoT automation to introduce computational thinking into the science lab. His students earn digital badges that create portfolios stocked with metadata related to skill acquisition and evidence of achievement. Chris enriches the curriculum by challenging his students to confront issues ranging from the future of food to climate neutrality. This is facilitated through citizen science partnerships with the United Nations, NASA, and Princeton University. He believes in broadening the lens through which his young learners view the world and has created a collaborative global classroom in which his students have lab partners on four continents.

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450 Deer Park Road

Dix Hills, NY 11746

Tour Hours

M-F: 10am - 3pm

S-S: 11am - 2pm (February - June)

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Park Shore Perks