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 | Lotus School Board Members
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Posted by Principal.
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Current Board Members’ Biographies
 Matt U Yapanel, PhD
Board President
Email:president@lotusschool.org
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
Email: nurjan_u@yahoo.com
Mr. Ustemirov has a Bachelors and Masters degrees majoring in computer science and minoring in math and economics. He has numerous publications in the area of high performance computing. Prior to joining Ericsson Inc as a software engineer, he has worked in Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. In addition to his college degrees, Mr. Ustemirov has completed his high school education with honors degree. He had received invitation to the nation’s top school with full scholarship. During his high school years, he has competed in state, nation, and international competitions in the subject of Chemistry.
Mr. Ustemirov's academic experience include: mentoring high schools students for chemistry competitions, tutoring, leading labs and recitation at university, and finally teaching undergraduate courses at University of Nebraska Lincoln. His teaching experience, deep knowledge in computer science, chemistry, math and economics would be of a great value as a board member
Mustafa Arisoylu, PhD
Board Member
E-mail: arisoylu@gmail.com
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
E-mail: dcduffy@gmail.com
Dennis Duffy is a long time Colorado resident and a Vietnam War era veteran. Mr. Duffy has three school age children, one of which presently attends Lotus School for Excellence. Mr. Duffy is bi-lingual in Thai and English. He has previously lived in Asia where he and his wife were members of the Thai Silk Association and manufactured and exported hand-woven upholstery cloth. While in Asia he also worked as a sales consultant for Industrial weighing equipment. Presently he is employed as a Communications Technician for a large global Telecommunications Company. He is on the board both as a parent of a student and to support his belief that education in Math, Technology, and Science is critically necessary for our youth to grow and prosper in a global economy.
Elif Trujillo
Board Member
E-mail: e-trujillo@live.com
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.
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