Stuyvesant Physics Team

About Us

Here's our team and how we work!

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The Captains
Meet the current captains of the Stuyvesant Physics Team.
Aareeb Jamil
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Aareeb is a senior at Stuyvesant who enjoys physics and mathematics. He hopes to pursue scientific research in the future. Aareeb spends his free time listening to music and watching movies.

Chenkai Shen
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Chenkai is a senior at Stuyvesant who likes math and physics. He enjoys astrophysics in particular, and is interested in space exploration. In his free time, Chenkai likes to play chess, volleyball, and video games.

Owen Lim
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Owen is a senior at Stuyvesant who likes physics and math. He spends his free time playing video games, soccer, and reading.

Calvin Zhang
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Calvin is a senior at Stuyvesant with a strong interest in math and physics. He enjoys the creative thinking fundamental to these subjects. Calvin also has an interest in gardening and likes to occasionally play the new Zelda games. His current favorite physics topic is electromagnetism and he looks forward to teaching physics to new students.

The Founders
Meet the two co-founders of the Stuyvesant Physics Team, Andrew Binder and Alvin Li.
Andrew Binder (2021)
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Andrew has been extremely passionate about physics from a young age and was surprised to see that there was no official physics team at Stuyvesant High School of all schools. Andrew co-founded the team his junior year in an attempt to boost awareness for physics in one of NYC's top schools. Learn more about him on his personal website. He is now working towards bachelor's degrees in physics and applied mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Alvin Li (2022)
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Alvin, another person extremely passionate about physics, was also interested to see no physics team at Stuyvesant High School, and so he co-founded it to bring together those who liked physics. He continued as captain for a year after Andrew graduated, and is now working towards a bachelor's degree in computer science at the University of Michigan.

The Coach
Meet the coach of team Einstein, Dr. Mikhail Kagan.
Dr. Mikhail Kagan
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Dr. Mikhail Kagan is the coach for the A team, and takes care of all logistics surrounding how the A team functions. He has been with us since early 2020. He is also a professor of physics at Penn State University, and was, for a few years, a head instructor at PhysicsWOOT on AoPS. We are excited to have him again this year!

The Past Captains
Take a look through our team's history and meet some of the captains from years past.
The Team
Meet the two teams that make up the Stuyvesant Physics Team here.
Team Einstein

The A team (or Team Einstein) is a group for those willing to push even further beyond the standard physics curriculum into the more rigorous field of competitive physics and more. Students here will cover a variety of standard topics, as well as advanced strategies and applications for said topics. Students here aim to score high on the F=ma and even push to USAPhO and beyond. Students here are expected to do the assigned homework and practice a lot outside of the classroom to maximize productivity and gain the most out of this team.

Team Newton

The B team (or team Newton) is a group for those who want to get acquainted with physics beyond the classroom. While less rigorous and competitive than the A team, the B team will still cover a similar curriculum, albeit with fewer advanced strategies and with more of a focus on a basic and solid introduction of the material. Students here are still expected to do assigned homework and practice outside of the classroom to get the most use out of this team. Students here also aim to score above 10 on the F=ma exam, maybe even closer to qualifying scores.