Board of Directors

Saranto Calamas, CPA – The Treasurer

(calamas(at)schoolnova.org)

Saranto has been a CPA since 1988 and has had his own firm since 1993. Saranto’s firm presently has 15 employees. His area of expertise is small to medium-sized businesses and start-ups. He has assisted numerous companies in automating their accounting systems, reducing costs and overhead, and helping small businesses realize and meet their goals. He takes great pride in advising businesses on how to be the most tax efficient they could be and save as much as they can on taxes. Saranto graduated with honors from New York University in 1986 and received his master's in business administration in 1988 from New York University.

Anya Cartwright – Business Manager

(cartwright(at)schoolnova.org)

I was born and grew up in Ukraine, USSR. I graduated from Nikolaev School of Fine Art and gained my first and most fantastic work experience from joining the science-fiction writers' community as an illustrator. The following few years I spent in Moscow, attending MGIMO, Moscow State Institute of International Relations, only to confirm that I deeply longed to return into the field of Art. In 1992, I came to the USA, took 2D design and photography in Suffolk Community College to start, then pursued Photography and Video production in SVA (School of Visual Art) in New York.

Andreea Dragut – The Vice - President of the Board

(dragut(at)schoolnova.org)

Andreea graduated from the School of Mathematics, University of Bucharest in 1997 with a Bachelor degree in Applied Mathematics. She received a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Eindhoven in 2003. She worked from 2004 until 2014 as an Associate Professor in the Department of Theoretical Computer Science of Aix-Marseille University and currently works as a Cryptography Consultant. In Romania, as a student, Andreea loved to work with gifted children in the framework of a Romanian mathematical publication for children called Gazeta Matematica.

Alex Feinstein – The President of the Board

(feinstein(at)schoolnova.org)

Alex has a degree in Computer Science from NY Institute of Technology, NYC and works as Project Manager/Integration Specialist/Quality Assurance Analyst/Business Analyst/Tester Coordinator. He is a parent of three students, who have been at SchoolNova since 2009.

L.Tracey Gao

(gao(at)schoolnova.org)

I have obtained my Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Chicago and my B.S. degree in Chemistry from a teacher’s college (East China Normal University) in Shanghai, China. During my career in the R&D department of an S&P 500 pharmaceutical company, I served as a scientific/technical lead and intra-division liaison to contribute to the drug development for antibiotics and antidepressants. In that position, I also trained and supervised junior chemists tasked with developing and troubleshooting analytical methods and utilizing new instruments.

Oksana Ivashkevych – The Secretary

(ivashkevych(at)schoolnova.org)

Oksana has an M.Sc. degree in physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Her interests have always been around math and science at school. After graduation, her family moved to Israel. While living and working in Israel, Oksana taught 9 and 10 year olds Physics and Math in a local Sunday Russian school. She has been teaching math at SchoolNova since 2012. Oksana has been working on software development since 1997, Prior to joining the NSLS, she was a senior software engineer at Terumo Heart Inc. Since 2000 she has been working as a Control engineering at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Marina Polonskaia –The Executive Director

(polonskaia(at)schoolnova.org)

Graduated from the Krasnoyarsk State University (Russia) with M.Sc. degree in physics and teaching. Received her Ph.D. in theoretical biophysics from the Institute of Biophysics in Krasnoyarsk. When her family moved to the US, she worked as a postdoctoral research associate and research scientist at UIC (University of Illinois at Chicago), HMS (Harvard Medical School) and Stony Brook University. Marina has been running the SchoolNova enrichment program since the opening of the program in 2004.