Events

If we are what we eat - what are we eating?

Chemistry and chemicals are often regarded as antithetical to food and to be avoided in the diet at all costs. From a research career in carbohydrate (sugar) chemistry, Merilyn will offer examples of how in fact the chemicals that comprise food can be both beneficial to human health and a selling point for the food industry. A lifetime of teaching in five countries and four continents, and all ages from seven to seventy, enables Merilyn to unpack a conceptually difficult subject and make it accessible and fun for non-scientists.

About the Presenter

Merilyn’s career in teaching commenced in England and then moved to Malta GC, where she taught biology to the children of service personnel and SCUBA diving to Royal Marines. After relocating to Australia, Merilyn completed a Bachelor of Science with Honours in chemistry at James Cook University specialising in carbohydrate chemistry, and then taught senior chemistry at the Townsville Grammar School. At the age of 45 she completed her doctorate at the University of Montana (USA) specialising in carbohydrate chemistry while also working as an Assistant Professor (Research and Teaching).

Upon relocating to New Zealand, Merilyn took up a joint appointment at the University of Waikato and Forest Research (now SCION) in Rotorua, before becoming full time at this university. Merilyn’s research interests are not restricted to carbohydrate chemistry. Her extensive research collaborations within the University and with New Zealand and international CRIs and businesses have resulted in research papers on subjects as diverse as determining the geographical origin of possums from their dental enamel, the toxic components of karaka berries, the fundamental structure of biochar, production of biodegradable polymers, seagrass restoration and retention of antibiotics in soils.

Members of the public are invited to attend this free public lecture being held in the Lecture Theatre, Level 2 of the University of Waikato Tauranga Campus, Durham Street on Monday 2 March 2020.

Complimentary drinks and nibbles will be served from 5.15pm. The lecture will begin at 6.00pm and conclude at 7.00pm. The Spring Street parking building is open 24 hours and is free from 5.00pm.

An Evening with Sophie Grace Chappell is a free community event at UC’s Arts Centre location on 3 March, 6-7.30pm.

Following on from her research into epiphanies, those moments that radically shift our understanding, the presentation examines how we need to change as individuals and as a society in order to respond adequately to the climate crisis. This is, at least partly, a matter of being transformed by seeing the beauty of the world, and our humble place in it.

Having published over a hundred articles on ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, ancient philosophy and philosophy of religion, Professor Chappell has a wealth of expertise to draw on for her exploration of climate change response.

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Expander graphs in general, and Ramanujan graphs in particular, have been a focus of a lot of research in the last five decades. It has been probably the area with the most fruitful interaction between mathematics and computer science, where applications went both ways. In recent years a high dimensional theory of expanders have started to emerge. We will survey some of its challenges and achievements and try to explain why this is not just a generalization but also a direction which leads to new horizons in pure math ( e.g. topological overlapping) and in CS ( "property testing").

Professor Alex Lubotzky holds a Maurice and Clara Weil Chair in mathematics at the Einstein Institute of Mathematics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

He is known for contributions to geometric group theory, the study of lattices in Lie groups, representation theory of discrete groups and Kazhdan's property (T), the study of subgroup growth and applications of group theory to combinatorics and computer science (expander graphs) and error correcting codes.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the recipient of many distinguished international prizes.

In 2018 he received the Israel Prize, for mathematics and gave a Plenary lecture at the 2018 International Congress of Mathematicians at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Michael Erceg Senior Visiting Fellowship is made possible by generous support from the Margaret and John Kalman Charitable Trust

Refreshments will be served at 5pm, prior to the lecture in the level 4 Common Area (room 303.407).

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Learn how emotions are made and get an insight into the secret life of the brain, with Canadian writer and psychologist, Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett.

One of the world’s most respected scientists in the field of human emotion, her book, 'How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain', has radically changed our understanding of the way we feel.

In a rare Australasian appearance, Lisa will discuss the way that culture, environment and personal history create emotion. Her research has vast implications for almost every aspect of our lives: from legal systems, to parenting to the way we understand the human mind and experience life.

Dr Feldman Barrett is a University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University, with appointments at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital in Psychiatry and Radiology. She received a NIH Director's Pioneer Award for her research on emotion in the brain. She now lives in Boston.

This public lecture, in collaboration with the New Zealand Writers Festival and the University of Waikato will be held at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, starting at 6.15pm. Complimentary drinks and nibbles served from 5.30pm. Free parking is available on campus via Gate 2B, Knighton Road, Hamilton.

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Are you tired of doing the same thing all the time? Looking for something different to do in town?

Why not head to Wellington Botanic Gardens and into Space Place to spend some time gazing up into the skies above, zooming through the Universe in the planetarium.

A live presentation takes you out to space and back home - just in time for a drink as you look around the interactive space displays.

The Cable Car runs until 10pm so you can enjoy drinks and unique experience before heading into town gazing at our city below.

Astronomy on Tap is the perfect way to spend a relaxing evening getting amongst the stars with a date, mate, or flying solo leaving your earthly troubles behind as you wander the stars through our extended Night Sky program. In the second hour we journey further into the universe through galaxies and nebula and deep sky objects.

So, spend the night with us getting to know your night skies or at least put stars in your eyes (yes, couldn't resist a pun)

Ticket price includes nibbles and one drink upon arrival. There is also a cash bar for after the show.

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Morning session: Low Tide

10am–12noon

We’re turning Te Papa Hui | Backyard into a giant rock pool! Learn about some of the critters you might find at the beach during low tide and have a play finding and identifying them.

Suitable for tamariki 6 and under and their whānau. This event replaces our weekly Weka Wednesday.

Afternoon session: High Tide          

1–4pm

Explore a shipwreck in VR. Stay dry while you virtually scuba dive down to the reef at Taputeranga Marine Reserve (Island Bay). We will have marine scientists on hand to answer your questions and talk about how they survey life under the ocean. Suitable for tamariki 8+ and their whānau.

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Both events are drop-in and free.

At least ten different species of sharks are found in Otago coastal waters, but very little is known about their population sizes, or where they go, feed, mate, or have their young.

This Sea Week, Rob Lewis, of the University of Otago's New Zealand Marine Studies Centre, discusses the biology, ecology, conservation, and importance of these enigmatic creatures.

A better understanding of the diversity, abundance, and structure of local shark populations will be key to understanding the health of Otago’s local coastal ecosystems in a time of changing climate and oceans.

Hear about findings and feedback from the Otago’s very own Shark Spy project. This local citizen science project collects sightings and information about sharks regionally and nationally.

Find out how you can become a shark reporter-cum-scientist!

5.30pm, Thursday 5 March
Barclay Theatre

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This seminar focuses on the game changing applications of novel signal and image processing approaches based on deep-learning techniques for the accurate identification of translational Electroencephalogram (EEG) biomarkers of HypoxicIschemic (HI) brain injury from an exclusive data bank of clinical recordings of preterm infants, at birth.

Dr. Hamid Abbasi will discuss how the developed pattern recognition strategies are able to precisely classify EEG biomarkers from background activity and artifact, in real-time, with highly competitive accuracies compared to a clinical expert (tested on TBs of data).

Delving further into how such techniques can help with early diagnosis of HI brain injury, at bed-side, within the most critical first hours of life, where the current therapeutic protocols have been shown to be optimally neuroprotective in.

Finally, the seminar will share insights for future developments, including further capabilities of deep machine-learning strategies in biomedical engineering and neuroscience, along with the importance of employing high-tech facilities to achieve desirable outcomes.

Hamid is a Research Fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of Auckland with a longer-standing interest in advanced signal and image processing of biomedical data. He received his Ph.D. in 2017 in Engineering Science and holds M.E and B.E. degrees in Control, Electronics and Instrumentation engineering. His research interests expands to finding translations from lab experiments to the clinic, brain development, pattern recognition and classification, medical image processing and data science.

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BioBlitz is taking place in your backyard and this is your chance to discover more about the flora and fauna of the local environment.

Join staff from Auckland Museum along with research partners who are examining changes to local species from 1769 to present day.

Through connecting 250-year-old museum natural history collections (544 plant specimens collected in 1769-70 by Banks and Solander are at Auckland Museum), and the unpublished Solander’s ‘Primitiae Florae Novae Zelandiae’ allows local communities an opportunity to examine how biodiversity and the local environment has changed over time.

Come along and see some of the specimens collected, and talk to our experts who will share their discoveries.

Public are invited to visit the Tiaki Mauri BioBlitz marquee on Saturday 7 March at Te Whanganui-A-Hei. Join the us between 9:30AM-2:00PM, and look at some of the flora, fauna and fungi collected and meet with scientists.

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Dr Indranil Basak will speak about his previous experience in Parkinson's disease and his current work focusing on the childhood brain condition, Batten disease.

He is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Otago who works with Associate Professor Stephanie Hughes on childhood brain disease. Dr Basak moved to New Zealand in June 2018, after completing his first postdoctoral work at the University of Utah, USA.

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Dr Ailsa McGregor will discuss her research focus, which is a possible clinical endpoint treatment for neurodegenerative diseases, neuroprotection, and regeneration.

Dr McGregor is a Senior Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacy and Head of the Translational Neuroscience Lab at the School of Pharmacy, University of Otago. She is a Principal Investigator in the Brain Health Research Centre and Brain Research New Zealand Centre of Research Excellence.

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This seminar is based on Dr Wardell's research around environmental grief, hope, and the discourse of ‘hopium’ among environmental doomers.

However, the dilemmas it describes – at the intersection of the philosophical, practical, and moral – will feel familiar to most people living with awareness of the (present and anticipated) changes of the anthropocence. Highlighting the temporality of ethical decision making, the seminar focuses in on decisions about having and raising children as bringing these questions – about how to live, and how to live well, in a time of change and loss – into sharpest relief.

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Changes in our individual book of life – our DNA – can alter who we are and cause disease. Identifying and understanding changes in our DNA, and how they lead to conditions affecting brain development, is of immense importance.

In this talk, Professor of Paediatric Genetics Stephen Robertson, and Dr Adam O'Neill, Research Fellow, both of the University of Otago Department of Women's and Children's Health, address how this is being achieved, and outline the future applications of this work.

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The Lewy-CRATE/CRIS project aims to build a cohort of individuals with dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and a non-DLB disease dementia control. With linkages to local and national health record databases, researchers will examine de-identified clinical records for both cohorts in order to conduct a detailed examination of the disease characteristics, the individual’s course throughout the healthcare system, and disease outcomes.

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Mind over matter: the neuroscience of motivation

Every wonder why you quit something? Or start something difficult but don't always finish?

Dr Blake Porter, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Otago Psychology Department, provides an overview as to what's going on in our brains that makes us work hard at something difficult, or quit when the going gets tough.

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Could millions of jobs soon be eliminated by artificial intelligence and robots? From driverless cars to digital assistants, it seems the world of work is on the cusp of a technological revolution. But are the robots really knocking at the door? And what does all this mean for New Zealanders?

Join us at the Business School on Wednesday 11 March to hear from New Zealand economist and writer Kinley Salmon, as he interrogates common predictions about a jobless future and explores what we can do in New Zealand to shape the future of work to our advantage.

Kinley sketches out two bold alternative futures for New Zealand – and suggests what it might take, and what we might risk, to pursue each of them.

Doors open for registration at 5.45pm, with the lecture to begin at 6pm.

Light refreshments will be available before the presentation.

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A key exhibition area in Te Papa’s Te Taiao Nature Space shows how over 20 local kaitiaki/guardians are working to help restore and protect our natural environment, and inspire more of us to take action to combat climate change.

Aotearoa 2019, the recent Ministry for the Environment report, paints a bleak picture of the precarious state of New Zealand’s natural environment. Te Papa’s newly opened Te Taiao Nature highlights the impact human activity has had on our land, waterways and oceans, and challenges all of us to make personal changes in our daily lives.

Human activity in New Zealand has modified more than 51% of the land; just 26% of the native forest that once covered the country remains. Thousands of plant and animal species are under threat; stoats, possums and rats have invaded 94% of the country. 82% of our inland waterways are no longer suitable for swimming. Ocean fishing annually causes the death of 1,000s of sea birds. Aggressive trawling is ravaging the sea floor, and pollution, plastic waste and river sediment damaging fragile marine ecosystems. Add in climate change and we seem to be facing an insurmountable biodiversity crisis. Is it possible to make a difference?

Come and hear Friends President, Elizabeth Kay, describe how one small community group decided to take up the fight and what they have achieved in little more than a decade.

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Abstract: Far from taking us down the road of unpredictability and chaos, randomness has the power to help us solve a fascinating range of problems. This talk will lead the audience on a thought-provoking mathematical journey from penalty shoot-outs to internet security and patterns in the primes.

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Hear from Professors Nicholas Turner and Sabine Flitsch from the University of Manchester at the 2020 Ferrier Institute Public Lecture.

Fine chemicals are important starting materials used by a range of industries for the manufacture of pharmaceuticals, biopharmaceuticals and agrochemicals. Traditionally produced from petrochemicals, biotechnical processes using renewable biomass are increasingly able to provide cheaper and more sustainable alternatives.

Hear how new biocatalysts, which can mimic the complex biosynthetic pathways found in nature, are being discovered using genomic databases and protein engineering, including directed evolution—a technique developed by 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner, Prof. Frances Arnold.

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The purpose of MedCan 2020 is to educate and enable the New Zealand medicinal cannabis sector. We want to ensure that New Zealanders are equipped to maximise the opportunities that medicinal cannabis brings – improving quality of life and fuelling economic growth.

MedCan 2020 will bring together leading experts, scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers and thought leaders to share first-hand insights and up-to-date information about the world of medicinal cannabis.

The summit has been created to inspire and inform:

• Healthcare professionals
• Academics
• Researchers
• Government officials
• Business
• Investors
• Entrepreneurs and innovators
• Growers
• Patients

The educational component of “MedCan Summit 2020”, has been endorsed by The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) and has been approved for up to 12.5 CME credits for the General Practice Educational Programme (GPEP) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) purposes.

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Dr Golay will discuss the performance requirements for a stable long term response to climate change, and the reasons behind them. The focus will treat climate change as a current phenomenon requiring a prompt response if our grandchildren are to have a stable, desirable future. This discussion will rely substantially upon material taught in the MIT course, Sustainable Energy which, Dr Golay has led for the past 23 years. It is one of the most popular interdisciplinary courses at MIT, being joint-listed in five Academic departments. Its focus is upon energy and the environment, and has become increasingly concerned with the climate change in recent years.

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The purpose of MedCan 2020 is to educate and enable the New Zealand medicinal cannabis sector. We want to ensure that New Zealanders are equipped to maximise the opportunities that medicinal cannabis brings – improving quality of life and fuelling economic growth.

MedCan 2020 will bring together leading experts, scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers and thought leaders to share first-hand insights and up-to-date information about the world of medicinal cannabis.

The summit has been created to inspire and inform:

• Healthcare professionals
• Academics
• Researchers
• Government officials
• Business
• Investors
• Entrepreneurs and innovators
• Growers
• Patients

The educational component of “MedCan Summit 2020”, has been endorsed by The Royal New Zealand College of General Practitioners (RNZCGP) and has been approved for up to 12.5 CME credits for the General Practice Educational Programme (GPEP) and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) purposes.

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PLEASE BE ADVISED THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Talk with multi-award-winning New Zealand authors Rebecca Priestley and Elizabeth Knox about climate change grief and the importance of hope, as Rebecca discusses a life influenced by Antarctica and Elizabeth explores the notion of hope and the human imagination.

Rebecca Priestley’s book, 'Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica' tells a personal story of time spent on Earth’s most mysterious and precious frontier. The book is a poignant and relatable reminder of the complexities of our wishes and the vulnerability of our ideals. But it also reveals the strength that art and science, research and exploration can gift to us all. Rebecca Priestley discusses a life influenced by the frozen white continent.

Elizabeth Knox will focus on the notion of hope and is there a more powerful tool than a single, human imagination? The author of thirteen novels, three novellas and a collection of essays, Elizabeth is in possession of a mind that has delivered angels to a French vineyard, turned libraries into portals to other worlds, and wracked small-town Aotearoa with a lethal mass hysteria.

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The effects of hurricanes with respect to infrastructure resilience are reviewed with reference to Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. The effects of Hurricane Sandy on New York City and subsequent programs to improve the City’s infrastructure are described. Special attention is focused on the restoration of the L Line Tunnel, which was flooded by Hurricane Sandy. Professor O’Rourke will describe how a team from Cornell and Columbia Universities was assembled at the request of Governor Andrew Cuomo to help re-engineer a $1/2 billion project to rehabilitate the tunnel, and still keep the subway in service. The new approach integrates several advanced technologies, including distributed fiber optics and LiDAR, and makes a breakthrough in infrastructure restoration resulting from interdisciplinary work between civil and electrical engineers. He will also describe recent advances in earthquake resilience for the regional water supply for Southern California. The agents of change that lead to improved policies and approaches are explored, including the technical, institutional, and social challenges of introducing new technologies and engaging community support.

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There is no universal healthcare in the USA. Healthcare is very expensive and requires individuals to have healthcare insurance. In this lecture, Professor Stephen L. Walston discusses the challenges facing USA’s healthcare system.

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Along with Tim Denee, Chris is the co-author of We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa, published by Massey University Press in 2019. This contemporary atlas explores New Zealand’s landscapes, climate, places, populations, economy and culture through maps, charts and a series of guest essays. He will detail how the book was created, with a focus on curatorial and design challenges. The talk will include an account of how Chris tested the in-progress maps with readers and some insights he gained concerning effective visual communication.

Chris McDowall is a freelance data visualisation specialist. He has worked variously as a cartographer, environmental scientist and manager at the University of Auckland, Manaaki Whenua — Landcare Research and the National Library of New Zealand. Chris’s animated maps and visualisations have been exhibited at the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the National Library of New Zealand. He has created interactive data visualisations for the New Zealand Herald and The Spinoff. With co-author Tim Denee, Chris created the 2019 book We Are Here: An Atlas of Aotearoa. This collection of maps, graphics and essays that explore New Zealand’s landscapes, climate, places, populations, economy and culture.

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PLEASE BE ADVISED THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

How to Win The New Climate War: The Plan to Take Back Our Planet from the Polluters

Understand how to win the climate war and take back our planet from polluters with pioneering American climatologist and geophysicist, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science, Dr Michael Mann.

Human-caused climate change is arguably the greatest threat we face as a civilization. Efforts to attack and deny the scientific evidence have constituted a major impediment to action over the past two decades. At a time when we appear to be moving past outright denial of the problem, we face a multi-pronged strategy by polluting interests to distract, deflect, attack, and divide the climate activist community. Dr Mann will discuss what we can do to fight back, emphasizing the importance of both urgency and agency in efforts to save our planet.

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