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Dr Anika Molesworth is a farmer, scientist and storyteller. She is widely recognised for her work in agriculture and food systems and generating climate change awareness, and is author of Our Sunburnt Country. Awards include Young Farmer of the Year (2015) and Young Australian of the Year, New South Wales Finalist (2017). Anika is passionate about ensuring the best possible future for the planet,...

Cairo Malet (she/her) is a cyber security professional, specialising in governance, risk and compliance. She currently works for Octopus Deploy, leading their GRC programme. Before moving to Octopus, she spent three years leading risk assessment and remediation at one of the world’s largest mining companies, working with technology across both enterprise and operational environments. Her previous...

Dr Kit Prendergast, also known as The Bee Babette, is a native bee scientist and science communicator. Her research focuses on discovering the biodiversity of native bees and identifying the factors that influence their abundance, diversity, and distribution, so that we can have an evidence-based understanding of their ecologies to better conserve our indigenous bees. Her research has also involve...

Pia Andrews is an open government and data ninja [1] who has been working in making the world a better place for 20 years. She currently works within the (public sector) machine to transform public services through greater transparency, democratic engagement, citizen-centric design, open data, emerging technologies and real, pragmatic actual innovation in the public sector and beyond. She believes...

Jesslyn Tannady is a Developer Advocate at Facebook. She creates educational content about Facebook's technologies so that anyone outside of Facebook can use them. In a past life, she worked on video games and augmented reality navigation tools for astronauts for NASA. When she's not thinking about virtual reality technology, she's probably illustrating or voice acting. You can find her on Twitter...

Dr. Marsha Tufft is an engineer, author, speaker, and problem-solver. Her passion is helping kids succeed in STEM fields – science, technology, engineering, math. She brings 35 years engineering experience at GE Aviation and degrees in mechanical, aerospace, and materials engineering to the creation of STEM experiments and projects that can be done at home because there’s nothing like learning by...

Dr Stephanie Ryan, Ph. D. is a chemist, a boy mom, and a social media influencer who enjoys using her background to create superior educational products and content. Although an academic at heart, Dr Stephanie is passionate about learning through play. She can be found helping young kids explore the fascinating world around them. Over the years, Dr Stephanie has taught science to all age groups, b...

Dr. Elanor Bell is a senior research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division where her role combines a passion for conservation and the polar marine environment, with her experience of coordinating multi-national research and translating the outcomes to policy. Throughout her career, Elanor has wintered twice in Antarctica studying some of the smallest organisms on the planet (microbes) and...

Dr. Carly Howett is an Associate Professor at Oxford University. She is mainly interested in understanding the surface properties of icy worlds, including Saturn’s icy moons, Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids, Europa, and Kuiper Belt Objects (including Pluto and Charon). She is the Deputy Principal Investigator of the Ralph Instrument on New Horizons, an Instrument Scientist on NASA’s newly selected Lucy...

Helen (tw: @heyohelen ) is an earth scientist turned product manager turned startup founder. After leaving her mark at companies such as Zynga, Microsoft, and Github, she's gone on to co-found Co. Lab , a platform for technologists to upskill through cross-functional, project-based learning. Helen is especially passionate about thought diversity, the power of learning by doing, and cute cats. In o...

Dr Shelly Lesher is a Professor and Chair of Physics at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse (UWL) and a Guest Professor at the University of Notre Dame with an active research program in experimental low-energy nuclear physics and developing the next generation of scientists. Dr Lesher has authored of over 55 scientific publications which focus on understanding the structure of nuclei in journa...

Dr Merryn McKinnon's original degree was in marine science where, after the novelty of moving intertidal snails with a paint scraper wore off, she discovered that talking about her research to other people brought her far closer to her conservation goals than her actual project ever could. This led her to the field of science communication where she has stayed ever since, working in a range of rol...

Dr Dani Barrington uses interactive methods to understand people’s experiences with toilets, menstrual health and hygiene, incontinence and water, with a focus on low-middle income countries. Her participatory research and teaching focuses on ensuring that everyone has access to the services that they want to use, regardless of their income or the country they call home. She's also a Co-founder of...

Natasha Coutts is a doctoral candidate with the School of Human Sciences at The University of Western Australia (UWA), a postgraduate fellow with UWA's Africa Research & Engagement Centre, and a research affiliate of the Center of Excellence in Biology and Natural Resource Management at the University of Rwanda. Her research takes a multidisciplinary approach to understanding how habitat fragm...

Originally born and raised in France, Dr Heloise F. Stevance moved to the UK to study Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. After working as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group in La Palma for a year, she obtained her Masters of Physics in 2015. Heloise subsequently started a PhD studying the 3D shape of Core Collapse Supernovae, and earned her title in Spring 2019. In J...

Megan Knox is an early-in-career technical program manager at Microsoft and recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a degree in Computer Science and Engineering. As a PM, she does long-term planning for her software engineering team and drives success of large scale technical projects through communication and documentation. Prior to her start at Microsoft, she had two internships there...

Annette Hester heads TheHesterView Inc. and focuses on a new approach to working with data. Her projects show innovation in action. She is best known for bringing together leading experts in their field to form teams that work in unison to deliver excellence in data structuring and in data visualisation. Her work is distinguishable for the quality of the design. She brings decades of experience to...

Emily Ross is a business strategist, advisor, and startup mentor. She is founder of Inkvine , an international growth partner for award-winning technology firms across AI, IoT, Cybersecurity and ecommerce. She writes, lectures and speaks on communications in a digital age. She co-founded SportsTech Ireland in 2017 to help position Ireland as a leading destination for sports innovation and investme...

As an environmental educator Abbie Mitchell has led programs for NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service and EcoXplore. Founding Kids Connecting Nature in 2015 she delivers curriculum-aligned hands-on environmental programs for schools, the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney, council and community groups, including the ‘Super Pollinators’ about native Australian bees, and ‘Hollow Heroes’, fostering hollo...

Blake Chapman is a science communicator who finds inspiration in the big, broad world around her. She is a stickler for factual information, but loves to find fun ways to communicate those facts. Blake has a major focus on taking the time to understand an audience: what drives them and what they find interesting and important, then developing clever and creative ways to engage with and educate tho...

Dr Sabine Bird's background has taken her from a science degree at the University of Cologne in Germany, and extensive work experience at a biotech company for nearly 3 years, to medical research laboratories in Ireland and Australia. Sabine ended up in a clinical setting within the Neurosciences Research team at Edith Cowan University in Perth. While working there, she gained extensive experience...

Kriza Calumba is an assistant professor of the Department of Food Science and Chemistry at the University of the Philippines Mindanao. She previously received a Fulbright-CHED scholarship, which allowed her to pursue Master’s studies at Louisiana State University, USA. Her Master’s research was on beer with probiotic bacteria immobilised in durian rind powder. With her interest in probiotics, she...

Keri Bean is a systems engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. She is the deputy lead Rover Planner (aka Mars rover driver) on the Curiosity Mars rover and is a Helicopter Integration Engineer for the Mars 2020 mission. She got her bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Texas A&M University in meteorology, with her focus on studying the weather on Mars. Her hobbies mo...

Rebecca Wheadon is an experienced manager with a background in project management and Mario Kart. She lives for riding her bike in circles over short distances and also happens to manage the CSIRO Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Mid West region of WA. She is a world champion in track cycling and probably also Mario Kart - the latter of which is not necessarily evidenced by proof. Rebe...

Jasmine Fellows (tw: @jasfellows ) has a passion for combining science and the arts, from hands-on experiments to hula hooping. She is the Editor of Double Helix , CSIRO ’s magazine for young readers. She is also one of the Editors of the new book, More Hands-On Science . She loves to study and accidentally ended up with a Bachelor of Arts as well as the intended Bachelor of Science. She couldn’t...