November 18th is LGBT STEM Day, an international day to celebrate the contributions of LGBTQIA+ people in STEMM, so come and join us for some refreshments and to watch the National LGBT STEM Day Symposium!

The symposium will showcase the brilliant work being done by LGBTQIA+ professionals from across the Australian STEMM sector. Engineers, biologists, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, psychologists, geologists.... there'll be something for everyone!

So join us at CORE Innovation Hub for an evening of science, snacks, sundowners and socialising to celebrate the contributions that our queer community are making in STEMM!

We have a huge line-up of speakers this year, and our very own Dr. Prok Vasilyev (Curtin University) will be delivering his presentation live at the event!

Speakers include:

Professor Elanor Huntington (she/her) is Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University (ANU). Elanor is an established senior academic leader, with Board appointments to Innovation Science Australia, Significant Capital Ventures, Questacon and other government scientific advisory roles. In 2017 she was named an honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia and led the extended Group of Eight (Go8+) Engineering Deans as first female Chair up until 2019.

Professor Ben Burton (He/Him) is a mathematician at The University of Queensland, where he teaches supercomputers how to untangle knots. He is also passionate about bringing mathematics to schools and to the public, and has worked behind the scenes for many years with programmes such as the International Olympiad in Informatics and the National Mathematics Summer School. Ben believes it is crucial for young LGBTQIA+ students and researchers in STEM to know they are welcome and to see themselves reflected though role models at all career levels, and he aims to make the best use of the opportunities that he has to increase visibility and advocate for LGBTQIA+ people.

Dr Luke Weinel (he/him) is the senior coordinator for the Eye Bank of South Australia and Deputy-Chair of the Eye Bank Association of Australia and New Zealand. Holding professional qualifications in medical-science and statistics Luke is directly engaged in donor corneal tissue recovery and local and national allocation of corneas to meet transplant and research demand across Australia.

Dr Prokopiy Vasilyev (He/Him) is an experimental petrologist and mineralogist with cross-functional expertise in analytical geochemistry and renewable energy storage solutions at Curtin University. He completed his BSc and MSc at Moscow State University and a PhD at Australian National University in 2016. Currently, he is a postdoc at JdLC, Curtin University, where he delivers a portfolio of research projects for ARC and industry partners. Prok is passionate about the climate change topic and uses his skills and knowledge to battle this issue as the project lead for a newly founded Future Battery Industries CRC.

Dr Mohammad Taha (They/Them) is the co-chair of the Victorian chapter of Queers in Science, a researcher at the Melbourne School of Engineering and a non-binary queer person of colour. In 2019, Dr Taha was recognised as one of the top innovative engineers in Australia for their work in novel phase-changing materials and their role in smart-surfaces and the future of climate control. Dr Taha is an enthusiastic reader, writer, soon to be film maker and an advocate for the queer rights generally and people of colour specifically.

Dr Sarah Gordon (she/her) is head of the Presynaptic Physiology laboratory at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, where her team work to unravel the molecular machinery that governs neuronal communication. How do these molecules work together to modulate neurotransmission? What happens when this machinery malfunctions? And how can we correct this? Her group work on a range of neurological disorders caused by altered neurotransmission, including Parkinson’s Disease, epilepsy, autism spectrum disorder and neurodevelopmental disorders such as Baker-Gordon Syndrome, which her team helped to character

This event is proudly sponsored by CSIRO Mineral Resources and CORE Innovation Hub.