Are you ready to get nerdy!?
Think TED talks with beer. Discovery Channel meets Drunk History.

Be there AND be square!

Speakers

"The Science of Getting High"
by Dr Jonathan Falconer

Humans have been doing drugs for many thousands of years, and these days even highly successful (not to conflate that with good or moral) people like Elon Musk are doing them. Jonathan will talk about some commonly used and abused drugs and what pharmacological characteristics make it likely for a drug to be harmful. He'll also be funny.

Dr. Jonathan Falconer is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Otago and lectures on neuropharmacology, medicinal chemistry, and toxicology. He's also an award-winning stand-up comedian who has performed around the world.

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"All that glitters is litter: the not-so glamourous life of a microplastics researcher"
by Dr Helena Ruffell

The micro-problem that everyone is talking about – they’re in the oceans, Antarctica, inside of us – its microplastics! And we’re contributing to the problem! Who me? I’m not literally tipping glitter and microbeads into the ocean……but oh, in a way, we are. Join Dr Helena Ruffell as she relays her greatest quest yet – searching through your literal sewage to find the glittering jewels produced by oil (and those ‘but I’M MADE FROM PLANTS NOT OIL’ greenwashing tactics too!).

Dr Helena Ruffell emerged from the dark room of the microscope suite and found the light at the end of the tunnel and completed her PhD in Environmental Science at the University of Canterbury last year. A lover of all kinds of wastes, microplastics and biowastes have captured her heart, because she couldn’t find a normal glamourous topic to obsess over.

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"No, ballet dancers are not human!"
by Georgina Barr BA, Diploma Journ, BHSc Podiatry

Join Dance Health Consultant Georgina Barr as she guides you on a bendy adventure into the extremely elastic world of dance. If you thought that dancers were superhuman super athletes - you'd be right!

Georgina works in dance medicine locally, nationally and internationally. She is the only ever recipient of the Juon Pointe Gold Standard award for her original qualitative research on custom pointe shoe fitting and the relationship to lower limb malalignment and injury.

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