DIANNA COWERN
Dianna is the always enthusiastic, ever curious, creator and host of the highly successful YouTube channel Physics Girl. She’s especially passionate about science, education and sparking a lifelong curiosity in science for girls and minorities.
Hawaii born and raised, Dianna was inspired by physics as a girl. Thanks to encouragement by her teachers and family, she pursued a physics degree at MIT. She subsequently explored careers in scientific research (at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), software engineering (at General Electric) and science outreach (at the Reuben H Fleet Science Center and the University of California San Diego) before committing to the Physics Girl YouTube channel full-time.
Dianna loves sharing her curiosity with her 1.3 million subscribers and beyond, and she was recently named as one of Forbes 30 under 30. Her time is split between writing, filming and producing content for her YouTube channel; and public speaking engagements at conferences, universities, classrooms, and further afield. She lives in San Diego and loves to get out on the water surfing.
Laura Chernikoff (Operations)
Laura keeps the Physics Girl team moving with strategy, administration, and project management. She has worked with YouTube creators since 2010, at VidCon for 7 years, then as Executive Director of the Internet Creators Guild, before starting her own business as a consultant.
LEvi butner (Editor)
Levi is a videographer/editor from San Diego California. His love for cinema and the arts brought him to film school where he acquired a degree in Motion Pictures and Television. Since then, he was able to take his passion for movies and media into his professional life and become a full time filmmaker on the go.
Sophia Chen (Writer)
Sophia writes about physics as a humble attempt to make sense of the nature of reality. On the Internet she appears as a collection of bits, but in the real world she takes the form of an artisanal, small-batch soup of quarks. She has a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of Arizona, and her other writing appears in Wired, Science, and Quanta.
Hope Butner (Social Media)
Hope manages the social platforms to communicate with, engage with, and grow the Physics Girl audience. Before returning to San Diego, she studied philosophy, creative writing, and education in Santa Cruz while working as a college social media specialist, creative writing intern, and editor-in-chief of an undergraduate philosophy journal.
Kyle Norby (Animator)
Kyle graduated university with a motion design degree in San Francisco where he was immediately thrown into the gauntlet of industry-leading motion designers from Pixar. Currently he applies his 15+ years of animation, 3D and design experience to a world-leading nanotechnology company specializing in nano-optic, 3D and animated holograms.
PBS Digital Studios
(PRODUCTION PARTNERS)
PBS Digital Studios produces original, digital programming for YouTube and Facebook Watch, designed to engage, enlighten and entertain online audiences. The PBS Digital Studios network has more than 17 million subscribers, generating an average of 40 million views a month and has acquired nearly two billion views lifetime views. Currently, the Studio has 18 original series streaming online, including eight series from PBS member stations.
Previous Team Members
