Matt U Yapanel, PhDBoard President
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Dr. Yapanel is currently employed by the University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering as an adjunct faculty and teaches several core classes to graduate and undergraduate students. As an adjunct faculty, he is working to establish close relationships with the ECEE department that would allow a good co-operation between Lotus and CU-Boulder Engineering Department, including field trips and mentoring programs. Moreover, he is currently pursuing his MBA degree in Regis University.
Dr. Yapanel obtained his BS degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering in 1997, ranked 2nd in his class. He obtained two Master of Science degrees: one in Communications Engineering in 2000 and one in Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2001. From 2000 to 2004, he pursued his PhD degree in Automatic Speech Recognition at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He worked as an intern for two summers at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center in New York. He worked as a Speech Technology Engineer at a high tech company that focused on inventing language monitoring systems for children and on early detection of delay and deficiencies related to infant’s language development from 2005 to 2009. Dr. Yapanel has published a book chapter, 8 journal articles, and more than 15 conference papers in the area of Automatic Speech Recognition and Child Language Development.
He is a founding member of LSE I Aurora and currently serves as the board President. He has significant experience in charter school issues for over 5 years first as the board secretary, then as the board president. He handled many grant applications and closely monitored start-up business operations and school finances. Recently, he was very involved with LSE at Aurora permanent campus purchase. LSE at Aurora was able to purchase its permanent campus in only its second year of operations which was quite a big success (being able to secure loans for a $6.2M facility).
He was also very involved with the adoption of Renaissance Learning programs (a set of computerized adaptive assessment and monitoring programs) at Lotus which resulted in a 19% increase in reading CSAP scores only in its first year of use. With his knowledge and experience in science and technology and his passion for education, Dr. Yapanel is directing efforts at Lotus to design and implement various science-based curricula. He is also working to integrate technology and research-based reading and math programs and various assessment tools to stimulate an optimal learning environment for Lotus students. In addition, he is involved in establishing partnerships with local universities (especially CU- Boulder) and companies and directing marketing and fund-raising efforts.
Nurzhan Ustemirov, MS
Board Secretary
Mustafa Arisoylu, PhD
Board Member
Dr. Arisoylu received the PhD degree from University of California San Diego (UCSD), in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He received his M.S and B.S. degrees from Bilkent University, Turkey, both in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Arisoylu conducted research on resource allocation and performance optimization in communication networks and authored several publications. In 2004, he was a visiting researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory, (LANL), where his research was focused on resource allocation and traffic characterization on multi-hop communication networks. Previously, Dr. Arisoylu worked as a researcher at Cal-IT2 (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology), designing and architecting advanced multi-hop wireless mesh networks for emergency response applications. Dr. Arisoylu joined the Mushroom Networks Inc, a startup spin-off company from Cal-IT2, at its seed stage where he later served as Research Scientist and Vice President of Research and Development. He currently joined the systems design group at Ericsson Inc. research and development center in Boulder, Colorado.
Dr. Arisoylu has been awarded best teaching assistant award at University of California San Diego in 2004. He has a keen interest in use of cutting edge technology in K-12 education. His primary interest is to promote and integrate Internet access technologies in classroom environment. He intends to coach students on wired and wireless networking and Internet access projects in related classes and after school programs.
Dennis C. Duffy
Board Member
Elif Trujillo
Board Member
Mrs. Trujillo has received her degrees on Accounting, Economics and Finance from University of Colorado at Pueblo in December, 2006. She has been working at DIA for 8 years in management at a retail business. She always loved math, science and technology. She was a student in science-math class in High School. She is married, has a sister attending Lotus and a step-son in middle school. She has been a 9 years of resident in Colorado and loves Nature. She is bilingual. Her background in accounting and finance is a great asset for Lotus School for Excellence.
Chris Howell
Board Member
Hon. PhD Washington State U.
PhD Ed. Work U. of Colorado system
MA U. of Texas system
Mr. Howell is currently chair of Humanities and History at Red Rocks Community College in west Denver metro area. Chris has a broad background in ancient History and Archaeology in both the public and private sectors. He has been a professor at the 2 year and 4 year college levels the past decade and previously served as archaeologist and historian for Mesa Verde National Park and the Texas Historical Commission as well as working for private Cultural Resource Management companies. Mr. Howell has conducted field work all over the world and has numerous publications to his credit. Recent work includes the publishing of his dissertation in Popular Controversies in World History and the introductory chapter for Places of Encounter in World History.
Mr. Howell is active in both the Colorado community college system and in the integration process of the state of Colorado into the Pacific 12 conference. His background is useful for helping Colorado K-12 students matriculate successfully into the Pac 12 collegiate system. He emphasizes technology driven higher education for at risk and first generation college student populations which is useful for the student demographic at Lotus School.
Matt Talo
Board Member
Matt M. Talo, PhD Student,
Degrees in Mathematics,
Mr. Talo is currently a PhD student in University of Colorado, Department of Computer Science and Information System. He has a Bachelors and Masters degrees majoring in mathematics. He was ranked the top student when he graduated his college.
After his graduation, he gained first hand teaching experience he taught several math and geometry classes to high school students to prepare them for a nationwide University Entrance Exam.
Mr Talo also taught math, geometry and computer programming courses at Lotus School for Excellence from 2008 to 2010.
Now, he is coaching Computer and Math Olympiad students and First Tech Challenge (FTC) Robotics Team at Lotus.
