Kira Krumhansl specializes in developing educational tools that use real scientific data to engage students in learning science, critical thinking, and data literacy skills. She brings over ten years of prior experience in marine biology research, which she translates into innovative learning experiences for students.

Krumhansl is a curriculum designer for Ocean Tracks-College Edition. This interactive, Web-based resource promotes students’ data literacy by engaging them in analyzing the movements of large marine animals in relation to changes in their physical ocean environment. She is also a co-PI and curriculum lead on the Zoom In! Teaching Science with Data project, and is contributing to Real World, Real Science, a NASA-funded effort to foster middle schoolers’ data literacy and understanding of how their local weather relates to the larger climate.

In these and other initiatives of EDC’s Oceans of Data Institute, Krumhansl collaborates with scientific institutions such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and Stanford University. She also has ongoing collaborative projects in marine biology research with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Canada and Simon Fraser University.

Krumhansl is the author of numerous publications in marine biology on subjects ranging from kelp forest ecology to white shark physiology. (Read Krumhansl's blog post about her research on kelp forests here.)  She has also published articles on her work in science education in The Science Teacher and the Marine Technology Society Journal.

Currently, Krumhansl is an associate editor for the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution, and a reviewer for the National Science Foundation and numerous scientific journals.  She is also a scientific advisor for the KELPEX project.  Previously she was a member of a scientific working group on kelp forests and climate change at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at UC Santa Barbara. 

Krumhansl received a BSc in Biology from St. Lawrence University and a PhD in Biology from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. 

Regan Vidiksis is an early education researcher with extensive experience in advancing effective strategies to promote children’s early science and mathematics learning and support teachers in integrating technology into early childhood settings in developmentally appropriate ways. She specializes in deepening understanding of effective, systematic approaches to improving teaching and learning, especially among underrepresented and underresourced teachers and families.

As a researcher and project manager for EDC’s evaluation of Ready to Learn, Vidiksis contributes to studies that measure children’s learning from literacy, math, and science public media learning resources and provide new insight into ways to enhance the school readiness of preschoolers in high-need communities.

Vidiksis serves as a researcher on the Next Generation Preschool Science project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). In the project, she is working with a team to develop, iteratively refine, and evaluate the promise of an innovative early science curriculum that promotes science practices, concepts, and discourse in preschool classrooms serving children from low-income backgrounds.

Currently, Vidiksis contributes to several other EDC STEM education initiatives. She is advancing the goals of IDEAS: Inventing, Designing, and Engineering on the Autism Spectrum, an NSF-funded project aiming to develop an Engineering Design program for middle school children on the autism spectrum and their general education peers. Vidiksis is also working on Monkeying Around, an NSF-funded initiative to design, produce, and research animated and live-action videos, along with parent-child engagement resources, that seek to build preschoolers’ computational thinking skills.

Vidiksis was named a 2014-2015 CADRE Fellow, for her work in NSF Discovery Research K-12 STEM research. She regularly presents her findings at the annual conferences of national organizations, including the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics and the National Head Start Association. She has also served as a proposal reviewer for the American Educational Research Association.

Before joining EDC, Vidiksis worked as a preschool special educator through the New York City Committee for Preschool Special Education and as a special instructor through the NYC Department of Health’s Early Intervention program, providing individualized services to young children and families in school, community, and home-based settings. She also worked as a special education evaluator for these agencies, conducting developmental assessments to assist in the determination of service qualification.  

Vidiksis received a BA in English Literature and Rhetoric from Binghamton University, and an MS in Early Child Education and Special Education from Hunter College.

Makoto Hanita provides methodological leadership and develops research designs for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental studies, observational investigations, and retrospective analyses of education data. An expert in addressing threats to validity in real-world settings, he is adept in coaching researchers and practitioners on designs and analyses. In all of his research, he works to ensure studies have methodological rigor, are relevant to stakeholders’ priorities, and produce practical, actionable findings.

Hanita serves as the lead methodologist for the REL Northeast & Islands at EDC.  In this capacity, he works closely with the deputy director to guide and oversee all research and co-leads internal technical reviews of study reports. He regularly presents his research at the conferences of national organizations such as the American Educational Research Association and Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness.

Recently, Hanita co-published results of an RCT in special education in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders. He has shared his findings in numerous articles on education, health, and psychology, and has co-authored several reports published by the Institute of Education Sciences. Two of these include: An Investigation of the Impact of the 6+1 Trait Writing Model on Grade 5 Student Writing Achievement and An Experimental Study of the Project CRISS Reading Program on Grade 9 Reading Achievement in Rural High Schools.

Before joining EDC, Hanita was a senior research methodologist for Education Northwest. At Education Northwest, he led the design and analysis of several large-scale experimental studies in education, including an investigation of the impact of a trait-based writing model on student achievement, an efficacy study of Project GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design), and an RCT of Portland State University’s Comprehensive Autism Program Strategies for Teaching Based on Autism Research (STARS).  

Hanita holds a BS in Business Administration from Keio University in Tokyo, Japan and a PhD in social psychology from Indiana University. He speaks Japanese, English, and Portuguese.

Rebecca Schillaci is committed to conducting high-quality research of educational programs. She contributes her expertise in research design, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, survey design, statistics, and data analysis to a wide range of studies.

Schillaci is an evaluator for the Think College Transition (TCT) Model Project, an inclusive dual-enrollment model aimed at improving outcomes for students with intellectual disabilities enrolled in transition services by providing them with college experiences.

Schillaci is also a team member of the NSF-funded STEM Learning and Research (STELAR) Center, the resource center for the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) program. Through her work on webinars and as a project liaison, she provides technical support to ITEST projects and helps inform NSF and other stakeholders of ITEST’s impact by collecting and synthesizing data from those projects.

Previously, Schillaci served as an evaluator of an algebra curriculum in use in Connecticut (read a blog post describing the findings) and was a researcher in an NSF ITEST-funded-study of the effectiveness of technology-focused professional development. She is a co-author of an article that presents the results of that study, “Examining the Quality of Technology Implementation in STEM Classrooms: Demonstration of an Evaluative Framework” (Journal of Research on Technology in Education).

Before joining EDC, Schillaci was manager of the Child Cognition Laboratory at Boston University, where she contributed to the development, design, execution, and dissemination of several grant-funded research projects examining a broad range of topics including science learning, artifact categorization, teleological reasoning, and imitative learning in children and adults. She is coauthor on several publications based on this research, including “Children’s Conformity When Acquiring Novel Conventions: The Case of Artifacts” (Journal of Cognition and Development), “The Designing Mind: Children’s Reasoning about Intended Function and Artifact Structure” (Journal of Cognition and Development), and “Young Children Can be Taught Natural Selection Using a Picture-Storybook Intervention” (Psychological Science).

Schillaci received a BA in Psychology from Wellesley College and an MA in Developmental Science from Boston University.