Visiting Staff 2017

Sasha Abanov

Sasha Abanov is an associate professor of physics at Stony Brook University and a deputy director of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics. His research is in theoretical condensed matter physics and in mathematical physics. He is mainly interested in systems whose properties are defined by the laws of quantum physics. Some examples of such systems are superfluids, superconductors and Quantum Hall effect systems. Sasha enjoys teaching physics and mathematics at different levels. He has a lot of experience in teaching school students in various summer camps and math circles.

Andrei Antonenko

Andrei received his PhD in linguistics from Stony Brook University in 2012. He mostly works on theoretical syntax and semantics, exploring reflexive pronouns cross linguistically, in diverse languages such as English, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Icelandic, Balinese. His other areas of research include sociolinguistics, dialectology, and 3 non-standard varieties of English. In addition to his lecturing and research duties Andrei also teaches mathematics at SchoolNova.

Ljudmila Kamenova

Ljudmila is originally from Sofia, Bulgaria. As a high school student she participated in various international math competitions. Ljudmila received a gold medal at the Balkan Math Olympiad and a silver medal at the IMO. For her undergraduate degree Ljudmila attended Sofia University. Then she studied mathematics at MIT, where she received her PhD degree in 2006. After MIT she went to the IAS, Princeton, as a postdoctoral member for one year. Since 2007 she has been at Stony Brook University, where she trains the Stony Brook math Putnam team. Ljudmila's research interests include hyperkaehler and Calabi-Yau manifolds.

Ljudmila is also a competitive Bridge player. She has participated in many competitions, most recently winning the title of 2016 Long Island Player of the Year.

Dima Kozakov

Mathematician and Physicist by training, Dima likes to develop new approaches for prediction and design of molecular interactions using elegant concepts from theoretical physics and mathematics. He also enjoys mythology, traveling around the world, and alpine climbing.

Robert Kozma

He studied physical engineering in Moscow, Russia, mathematics in Budapest, Hungary, and has a PhD in Physics from Delft, The Netherlands. He has held various positions, including at UC Berkeley, Tohoku University (Japan), Otago University (New Zealand), and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Central Research Institute for Physics.

His interest focuses on developing novel artificial intelligent system motivated by the operation of brains. He conducts research on neural networks, cellular automata, random graph theory, machine learning, knowledge acquisition, computational neuroscience, neurally-inspired computing, processing massive brain imaging data, autonomous decision support systems, including robotics for NASA Mars mission, and brain-computer interfaces.

Marina Polonskaia

Theoretical biophysicist by training, Marina Polonskaia came to US and made a sharp turn in her career: she became a molecular biologist. After working in this field for 11 years (Chicago, Boston, Stony Brook), she made another sharp turn and became a Director of an academic enrichment program at Stony Brook. The program is known to many children in and around Stony Brook as SchoolNova. While in high school Marina herself was a student of a similar program as well as a student of Krasnoyarsk Summer School for gifted children in Russia. She returned to that summer school as a counselor and lecturer while in undergraduate and graduate school, and continues to travel to teach in Siberia almost every summer since 2006 (apparently she loves to travel). Marina is a faculty of SigmaCamp from its inception and once again she is happy to spend a week among interesting and talented people working in the camp.

Jason Starr

Jason is a mathematician working in the field of algebraic geometry. He received his PhD from Harvard in 2000, and after spending 6 years at MIT, joined the math department of Stony Brook University in 2006. He has received Sloan Fellowship (2005), NSF Career Grant (2009), and recently became a Fellow of American Mathematical Society.

Inna Sus

Inna is a physicist, mathematician and astronomer. She was a visiting scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where she worked on various projects related to computational materials. Currently, she is a scientific editor reviewing research papers in Physics and Astronomy.