About the Institute
The Pasayten Institute
is a startup research and education organization on a mission to build and share physics knowledge without barriers.
Our practice
is to create and run physics courses and engage directly with the public. Our courses and course materials are open access, and our aim is to elevate science literacy at all levels of knowledge.
While we engage in activities and practices to fund our courses, these courses and course materials will always be free.
Where we are.
The Pasayten
Just north of the Methow Valley, the land between the crest of the North Cascades and the Okanogan Valley is rugged, mountainous and home to a complex history of hunting, colonialism, resource extraction and NWPS management.
While presently demarcated by US Law, the area itself exists as its own integral ecoregion, which includes the traditional hunting grounds of the Nlaka’pamux people to the north, and some of the territories of the Okanogan and Methow peoples.
The Methow Valley
The Methow Valley is in north-central Washington State, east of the North Cascades and south of the Pasayten “Wilderness”.
The Valley is home to a strong community of individuals: including artists to agriculturalists, firefighters and forest services staff, educators and anglers, outdoor recreators and small business owners.
Our People
“In 2018 I arrived in the Methow River Valley and slowly became attached to a strong community of creators, builders, growers and thinkers. With limitless trails between my front door and the Canadian border, adventure took on an entirely new meaning. As the snows melted after my first few winters, I ventured out into the Lake Chelan-Sawtooth and Pasayten Wilderness, where the headwaters of the three main rivers that drained through the Methow reside.
The Pasayten Institute started as a series of YouTube videos exploring the trails and that eponymous wilderness near the Methow River Valley. Hours and miles of talking to the camera eventually brought us to the subject of Conformal Field Theory. Unexpectedly, people subscribed and followed along! This early success proved there was demand for open access physics education, and the Pasayten Institute was born.”
- Sean
Sean got his PhD from Texas A&M studying the intersection of string theory, particle physics and cosmology. Sean has published in peer-reviewed journals in topics as diverse as higher derivative supergravity, particle phenomenology and theoretical cosmology.
Sean worked for almost a decade in industry, generally focused on machine learning, applied game theory and marketplace design, recommendation systems as well as the general work in the area of distributed cloud computing with large scale data sets.
He has been teaching, tutoring and mentoring students for over twenty years, at levels ranging from elementary school mathematics to graduate level physics.
Sean Downes
Greg Kauwe
Greg has a background both in Finance and in Culinary Evangelism. Aside from dealing with dollars, balance sheets and numbers, Greg has contributed to events and publications such as Feast Portland, Eater and Tales of the Cocktail.
Always fascinated by technology, Greg made the jump into the tech industry, working with Amazon AWS Startups before coming to focus on AI application strategy.
At the Pasayten Institute, Greg is working on how to use large language models as educational tools, and how to train others in their use.
