Origin Story

Six years ago, Elon Musk asked me to start an experimental school with him at SpaceX.

The goal was to develop students who are enthralled by complexity and solving for the unknown.

Synthesis is the most innovative learning experience from that school. It is designed to cultivate student voice, strategic thinking, and collaborative problem solving.

I believe Synthesis builds these skills like no other education experience.

Until recently, Synthesis was only available to a handful of SpaceX families. Today, our community is worldwide and growing quickly. Excited for you to be a part of it.

Warmly,

Josh Dahn, Cofounder & Creative Director

Meet Our Facilitators

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Josh Dahn

Joshua Dahn is the co-founder and creative director of Synthesis. Additionally, he serves as the Executive Director and founder of Astra Nova School in Los Angeles. Previously, Josh was the co-founder of Ad Astra School located on the campus of SpaceX from 2014-2020 and a Teach for America corps member in Las Vegas.

Kristine Poptanich

Kristine comes from the national security realm, where she spent over a decade using strategy to combat threats in the domestic and international spheres. She also brings a strong theoretical foundation to the team, having earned her MA, with distinction, in strategic studies and international economics from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Steven Eno

Having worked for NASA JPL, Northrop Grumman, and Saba Software, Steven is passionate about all things aerospace, computer science, and engineering. He founded and directed the SEED (Social Entrepreneurship, Engineering, and Design) program at The McDonogh School as well as a K-12 engineering program at his alma mater, El Segundo High School, where he also coached teams of students to reach international engineering competitions.

Shane Glick

Shane is an Editor of Animated Feature Films from Los Angeles, California. His credits include Over the Moon, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and 3, Puss in Boots, and Kung Fu Panda 2. Shane graduated from USC's Viterbi School of Engineering with a degree in Computer Engineering and Computer Science.

Luc Alvarado

Luc has worked as a data scientist in Edtech for more than five years in New York at Scholastic and TeachersPayTeachers and more recently worked on multimodal transportation problems at Lyft. Currently, Luc works as a research assistant for the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy and is excited to draw connections between simulations and real-world problems with the students of Synthesis.

Aaron Sitze

Aaron Sitze is a two-time Illinois State Teacher of the Year Finalist (2021, 2014), and a doctoral student at Northern Illinois University, where he studies innovation in curriculum and instruction. Aaron is an avid practitioner of experiential learning and now facilitates the Changemaker Pathway -- a sequence of courses that challenges students to self-direct their learning to solve social, environmental, and economic problems.

Stoyan Karastoyanov

Stoyan hails from Bulgaria and recently graduated with a degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Technical University in Berlin, Germany, where he's now earning a MS in Computer Science. Stoyan advocates that the world adopt a more human-centric perspective and engage more fully with the existential problems facing our civilization such as making us a multiplanetary species, addressing aging and genetic diseases, nurturing more innovators that the world will need in order to solve the increasingly complex challenges ahead.