Sci21 Science Webcast Series

Sci21 Speaker Dr John Perrott, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Speaks about how Matauranga Maori can help involve indigenous people in science.

Sci21 Speaker Dr. Siouxsie Wiles, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Picture this. You commission me to draw your portrait and send me a photo to work from. When you and your friends ask to see the finished portrait, I tell you I gave it away to someone else, and paid them several thousand dollars to take it, because it was in colour. When you ask them to see your portrait, they charge you and each of your friends $30 to look at it for 24 hours. And when someone else asks me to see the photo I worked from to check how good a likeness the portrait is, I tell them they can only see one corner of the photo. Or maybe I decide not to let them see it all, in case they want to draw a portrait of you too. Ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it’s a fairly accurate description of a lot of publicly-funded biomedical science. In her Sci21 webcast, Siouxsie describes how the internet age is challenging this outdated model and calls for scientists and the public to fight for a publicly-funded science system fit for the 21st Century.

Sci21 Speaker Barbara Bollard Breen, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand

Low flying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) offer ecologists new opportunities to collect scale appropriate data at high spatial and temporal resolution.

Sci21 Speaker Dr. Victoria Metcalf, Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, New Zealand

We are in an era of unprecedented issues facing humanity and the world we live in. Science is central to many of these global problems we face and yet often there is a mistrust or lack of understanding around science. Hence, raising our science literacy is incredibly important, especially to the future of young New Zealanders.

Sci21 Speaker Prof. Shaun Hendy, the University of Auckland, New Zealand

Are scientific theories objective or do they depend on the eye of the beholder? Most people would agree that gravity affects our lives in more-or-less the same way, no matter who you are. But what about the science of gravity

Sci21 Speaker Prof. Don Cowan, University of Pretoria, South Africa

We are in the midst of a new scientific revolution! In little more than a decade, dramatic developments in the technologies available for sequencing genetic material (DNA and RNA) have reduced the costs of sequencing by a million fold and opened entire new fields in environmental, biotechnological and medical research.

Sci21 Speaker Professor Peter Sternberg, Sydney Institute for Marine Sciences, Australia

On our increasingly urban planet most people encounter the marine environment in their backyard – in cities. How then, can we manage urban marine systems—coasts, estuaries and harbours—for the benefit of city dwellers, the “blue” economy and the environment?

Sci21 Speaker Dr John Perrott, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand Speaks about how Matauranga Maori can help involve indigenous people in science.

Sci21 Speaker Assoc. Prof. Gavin Smith talks about Emerging Infectious Diseases

Sci21 Speaker Dr Heather Hendrickson, Massey University

One of the key science questions of our time is how to beat bacteria in an age where antibiotics are no longer effective.