The announcement from Liberty Science Center:

Daniel J. Menelly, a Pre-eminent Authority on Science Education, Named Vice President of STEM* Education at Liberty Science Center

February 14, 2012 (Jersey City, NJ) – Liberty Science Center today announced the appointment of Daniel J. Menelly to the position of Vice President of STEM Education starting March 12. Mr. Menelly will direct the Science Center’s extensive instructional programs that reach 190,000 students and teachers throughout New Jersey and the greater NYC area.

Paul Hoffman, President and CEO of Liberty Science Center, says, “Very few people have Dan’s extraordinary range of experience and diversity in STEM teaching and curriculum development. Liberty Science Center is committed to bringing the excitement of science to students and families from all backgrounds, and Dan is the right person to expand our already robust programs.”

Since 1998, Mr. Menelly has worked at the United Nations International School in Manhattan, where he developed and taught middle-school science through a minds-on, experiential model and integrated science lessons into other academic disciplines. In 2010-11, he took a leave of absence from the UN school to become the Albert Einstein Distinguished Fellow at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, Virginia. There Mr. Menelly tracked, evaluated, and promoted STEM education policy and reform initiatives at the national level.

Mr. Menelly’s areas of specialization include curriculum design and review, cyber-enabled learning, science education media, teacher evaluation, and hands-on science. He has developed curricula in astronomy, materials science, oceanography, chemistry, and physics, and he holds patents on science teaching aids known as The Alien Magnet Ball and The Galactic Manipulative. He has achieved national recognition for his many science instructional videos, including Light Physics and What’s Stomata With You?

He is a science education advisor at the Science House Foundation. He previously worked at the Harlem Day Charter School in New York City and has taught science at the American School of Paris in St. Cloud, France, and at Seacrest Country Day School in Naples, Florida.

Mr. Menelly was a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Materials Science. He holds a B.S. in Biology from Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut and received his General Science Grades 7-12 teaching certificate from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. He is a resident of New York City.

*Science, Technology, Engineering and Math

About Liberty Science Center
Liberty Science Center (lsc.org) is a 300,000-square-foot learning center located in Liberty State Park on the Jersey City bank of the Hudson near the Statue of Liberty. Dedicated to bringing the excitement of science to people of all ages, Liberty Science Center houses seven museum exhibition halls, a 3D theater, the nation’s largest IMAX dome theater, live simulcast surgeries, tornado and hurricane-force wind simulators, K-12 classrooms and labs, and teacher-development programs. 600,000 students, teachers, and parents visit the science center each year, and tens of thousands more benefit from the center’s offsite and online programs.

Enter Late Nite Labs, a company that provides a full-service interactive online virtual science laboratory with a full curriculum suite for both high school and college students. Science House Foundation Executive Director Joshua Fouts discusses the origins, goals and future of the company with its founders CEO David Jaffe and Harris Goodman, Chief Development Officer.

Screenshot of a Late Nite Labs experiment

New Financing
TechCrunch recently reported on Late Nite Labs new round of financing from investors, despite doing well with a strong paying subscriber base in the “tens of thousands.” In our interview Harris Goodman describes how this will help the company accelerate and expand their curriculum development.

A Global Perspective
Late Nite Labs already has an eye on a global market with easy-to-use translation tools that allow non-English-speaking students to use the software. David tells us that they plan on reaching out to more international markets soon.

Competition or Collaboration?
With the dominance of the Khan Academy, which has experienced dramatic growth in the online video education field, we discuss how the makers of Late Nite Labs see their work in relation to the likes of similar online video platforms. Jaffe and Goodman describe what’s next for Late Nite Labs in an era of rapidly evolving technology where virtual world platforms become quickly outdated.

What do Science Teachers Think?
We also explore how science teachers have responded to a tool that could theoretically remove the need for many of the costly wet lab equipment most chemistry and physics labs require. This is not a minor issue for many science teachers. There is significant debate about the educational merits of virtual science labs. Harris and Jaffe explain the ways the experience is unique and, in many ways complementary to a wet lab. One interesting element the Late Nite Labs education experience is that mistakes can be made where incorrect results are fully simulated. They also have a well-defined mathematical system wherein students can simulate the use of materials they would likely never have the opportunity to test in the physical space, for example, working with e-coli.

Listen to the full podcast here:

A conversation with the founders of Late Nite Labs, a Virtual Science Laboratory by ScienceHouseFdn

About our podcast guests.
David Jaffe, CEO and Founder

David Jaffe, CEO and Founder of Late Nite Labs

David is the founder and visionary behind Late Nite Labs. Along with a deep background in online education and applied science, David brings his passion to LNL. Prior to founding Late Nite Labs, David was the CTO of Net Talk. David received his B.SC in Mechanical Engineering as well as an M.Sc from Technion University in Biomedical Engineering.

Harris Goodman, Chief Development Officer

Harris Goodman, Chief Development Officer at Late Nite Labs

Harris leads Late Nite Labs’ business development and sales efforts. Previously, Harris was an associate at a Manhattan based investment bank, where he concentrated on digital media. He also served as VP of Business Development of Kinor Technologies, a semantic web and data base platform. Harris holds an M.Sc from Johns Hopkins University in molecular biology.

Daniel Menelly describes "La Science Amusante" in his latest Video Science experiment.

Daniel Menelly, Science House Foundation’s Science Education Advisor and host of our Video Science app series has just released a new experiment called “Sorry to Burst Your Bubble.” This experiment is based on a popular Victorian Era “parlor trick” known as “La Science Amusante.” In the experiment, Dan describes both the mathematical and artistic lessons teachers and parents can share with their budding scientists.

A warm welcome to all our new Video Science readers: We had 10,000 new downloads last week!

Download the app here. And let us know your thoughts!

[Also see: Happy Birthday Video Science!]