The Laborastory

Andrew Watt is a PhD candidate at The Bio21 Molecular Science and Biotechnology Institute and the Neuroscience and Medicine Editor for ScienceSeeker.org. He tells the story of neurosurgeon Robert J. White.

Liam Ryan is a comedian, improvisor and writer. He performs comedy regularly at festivals and comedy clubs. This year he edited the book Dammit Science, Where's My Hoverboard? He speaks about Thomas Edison.

Sarah Nagorcka is a writer, performer and pharmacist. She recently produced her second Melbourne Fringe show “Love in the time of MRSA” a play about antibiotic resistance. She speak about LSD discoverer Albert Hofmann.

Dr Carleton Coffrin is a computer scientist interested in how humans think and why machines can't. He talks about the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and psychologist Henry Murray.

Jen Morris is a freelance science and health writer and science presenter, currently co-writing a research paper in the area of public health policy. She speaks about Dr William Stark.

Alasdair McAndrew is a maths educator at Victoria University, his area of espertise range from digital image processing to computer algebra. He tells the life of Gerolamo Cardano: a great mathematician who was also a gambler, occultist and astrologer.

Tony Klein held a Personal Chair at the University of Melbourne. He was Head of the School of Physics, and elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and Member of the Order of Australia. He explains us how his research has benefitted from the early ideas of the French engineer and physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel.

Escaping his past life as an engineer, Dr Colin Hales now researches brain electrodynamics at the Centre of Neural Engineering at the University of Melbourne.

He tells the story of a physicist who turned into a historian, Thomas Kuhn.

Katie Mack is a researcher in theoretical cosmology. She seeks to answer the Big Questions about the nature of the Universe and fundamental physics and she also spends way too much time on Twitter. She speaks of her first encounter with theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking and of her less-known true science hero, Captain Sam Houston.

Simon McKenzie-Nickson is undertaking a PhD in Neuropharmacology with a focus on Alzheimer's Disease. He has his own science blog and blog for the Royal Institution of Australia. He tells us about the scientist who has inspired him most, Carl Sagan.