Meet our Board

The board is responsible for organizing the tournament, coordinating with participating schools, and ensuring that the competition runs smoothly every year.

  • Katie Sandling

    President

    Trinity School

    Katie is the first non-founder to serve as President of USAYPT and currently teaches at Trinity School in New York City. She has an undergraduate degree in engineering and a masters in science education. Her relationship with YPT is long: Bruce Oldaker was her high school teacher, and when she started her teaching career at Rye Country Day School, she coached their YPT team under Mary Krasovec. After moving to Trinity she started a team there, served as a YPT Head Juror and joined the Board before beginning her term as President. Katie loves that the four YPT problems each year gaurantee she will never be done learning, and she is proud to continue the tournament’s camaraderie and community amongst physics students, educators, and professionals.

  • Mary Krasovec

    Treasurer

    Rye Country Day School

    Dr. Mary Krasovec earned a B.S. at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with majors in Physics and Math. She earned a Ph.D. in Geophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, MA with her thesis “Subsurface Imaging with Reverse Vertical Seismic Profiles.” She spent four years at New England Research in White River Junction, VT where she helped collect seismic data from local networks in Central Asia to be used to improve seismic models of the region. Inspired by friends who were teachers, Mary became a physics teacher at Rye Country Day School in Rye, NY in 2008. Her co-teacher, Dr. Bruce Oldaker, was a co-founder of USAYPT. Mary took over his roles as YPT coach at RCDS and Treasurer of USAYPT when he retired in 2012. Mary thanks her high school physics teacher, Mr. Brown of Bellevue East High School in Bellevue, NE, for inspiring her career as a student and teacher of physics.

  • Tengiz Bibilashvili

    Tournament Director

    University of California Santa Barbara

    Tengiz Bibilashvili is a founder of USAYPT and 1993 IYPT World Champion coach of the Georgian Team. Tengiz has served on USAYPT’s board since its creation and currently serves as the Tournament Director, in charge of organizing the flow of preliminary and final rounds, awards, juror assignments, and scoring. Beyond USAYPT, Tengiz also has been selected to serve as the Academic Director of the U.S. Physics Team. He received his Ph.D. from the Tbilisi State University and B.S./M.S. degrees from MITP (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology), the host institution of the IPhO team. Tengiz began teaching in the United States in 2003 and remains actively involved with many educational programs to support high school students and teachers while serving as a teaching professor at UC Santa Barbara.

  • Matt Greenwolfe

    Interim Secretary

    Cary Academy

    Matt is a founding board member and former president of the American Modeling Teachers Association, which promotes modeling instruction and provides training in modeling instruction for high school science teachers. He has taught physics at Cary Academy since 2000, and brought his first team to the USIYPT in 2015. That first group of students learned so much by conducting their own research and presenting and defending their results that teams from Cary Academy have participated every year since. He joined the board when Cary Academy first hosted the tournament in 2022 and stepped into the secretary role last year in order to help ensure USAYPT can continue to provide a unique and valuable opportunity for students.

  • John Jai

    Board Member

    Maret School

    John started working with USAYPT as a coach for the team Woodberry Forest School in 2008. He loves the competition and collegiality fostered by the organization and has served as a Juror and Head Juror for seemingly countably infinite physics fights. John has been a board member since 2010, looking for ways to expand USAYPT as well as refine the roles of reporter and opponent. John is currently a math teacher and debate coach at Maret School in Washington, DC.

  • Peter Sheldon

    Board Member

    Randolph College

    Peter Sheldon is the Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics & Engineering and the Division Head for Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Randolph College. Dr. Sheldon recently served for ten years as the Director of the Center for Student Research at Randolph and is an active undergraduate research mentor. In 2023, he won the National Advisor of the Year Award from the Society of Physics Students. Dr. Sheldon is currently the Principal Investigator of his third million-dollar NSF grant to support students who intend to become scientists and engineers. He is an active member of the American Physical Society and the American Association of Physics Teachers, having served on the APS’s Committee on Education and Committee for the Status of Women in Physics. Dr. Sheldon started the College’s Science Festival in 2005 and has grown it to an event that has over 5000 attendees. He has worked in science education throughout his career, and has worked on various aspects of the AP Physics exam since 2006, becoming the Chief Reader from 2015-2018. Dr. Sheldon has over 30 publications and more than 100 conference presentations.

  • Drew Austen

    Board Member

    Maggie L. Walker Governor's School

    Drew holds dual master’s degrees in physics and statistics from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has been a juror for USAYPT since 2016. He began teaching at the Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies in 2022 and has been working to increase a competitive STEM presence in the school. He began bringing a team of Maggie Walker physics students to compete in the 2024 tournament and now coaches 30+ students per year in doing active research on the USAYPT problems.

  • Mark Hurwitz

    Problem Master

    The Nueva School

    Mark’s love for the physical sciences and math was inspired by great teachers at Richardson High School in Texas. He attended Rice University (B.A., Physics) and U.C. Berkeley (Ph.D., Astronomy & J.D.). As a graduate student, he took an interest in far- and extreme-ultraviolet astronomy, and constructed telescopes, spectrometers, and detectors for space flight. His instruments flew aboard sounding rockets and the space shuttle. In 1997, he received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He served as the Principal Investigator of the Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer, a University-class Explorer mission launched in 2003 and operated until 2008. After a parallel career in intellectual property litigation, he became a teacher at Lick-Wilmerding High School in San Francisco. He joined the founding faculty at the Nueva School when it opened its Upper School in 2013-14. He brought his first team to USAYPT in 2018. He soon began proposing problems to the then-current Problem Master, who adopted several over the ensuing years (Rainbows, Lava Lamp, Tuning Forks, Long Jumping, and Scintillations). He looks forward to curating the problems for tournaments in 2026 and beyond, when he will step back from coaching the Nueva team.

  • Dan Fromowitz

    Chief Development Officer

    Industry

    Daniel Fromowitz is a New York State native with a B.S. in physics from Haverford College and a Ph.D. in physics from Cornell University. He has been a long-time member of the American Physical Society and U.S. Women in Nuclear, and for his day job, works as a nuclear engineer at Fluor Marine Propulsion. For sport, he runs, bikes, and plays Ultimate Frisbee. Daniel has been a USIYPT juror in most of the tournaments since 2015.