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The Australian Science Communicators are hosting the conference in collaboration with the World Federation of Science Journalists.

Speakers

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

9.00 am to 4.30 pm:

UNESCO journalism education and training

2.00 to 3.30 pm / 4.00 to 5.30 pm:

Linda Worland, the Principal of Oz-Brij Communication, is an experienced technical editor who works on documents tailored for specific audiences. Her editing projects range from long and complex reports, such as environmental impact assessments, to primary research papers and brief highlights on research papers published in academic journals. Before founding Oz-Brij in May 2001, Linda was based in Japan for five years where she worked as a science writer and editor.

Kathie Stove

Kathie Stove is a freelance editor and writer specialising in the fields of biological science, environment and climate change. She is a certified 'Editor in the Life Sciences' (ELS) with the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (United States). In the 15 years of her business, in writing, Kathie has edited mostly technical, environmental impact and general reports, and strategy and community information documents, for government, and engineering and environmental consultancy firms. She also writes summaries for such documents and dabbles in writing on the arts and professional cycling for a bit of variety.

Daniel Park

Daniel Park is a scientific editor with Crop & Food Research, one of New Zealand's Crown Research Institutes, where he works closely with scientists on their client reports, journal and conference papers, research and funding proposals, and other outputs. By the time he moved to New Zealand two years ago, Daniel had a decade's experience of technical writing and subbing, feature writing, magazine editing and book publishing, and had worked on publications as diverse as the Lancet and the British Comedy Awards magazine.

3 pm: Registrations open

6 pm: Welcome reception

Tuesday

9.00 am to 10.15 am

Plenary - Biasing scientific information

Savoy 1

Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect. He focuses on issues at the intersection of science and politics, and is author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science, dubbed 'a landmark in contemporary political reporting' by Salon.com and a 'well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists' by Scientific American. His next book, entitled Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, will be published in June of 2007 by Harcourt Books.

Among other accolades, Chris was recently named one of Wired magazine's ten 'sexiest geeks.' In addition, The Republican War on Science was named a finalist for the 2005 Los Angeles Times book prize in the category of 'Science and Technology,' and Chris's 2005 Mother Jones feature story about ExxonMobil, conservative think tanks, and climate change was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the 'public interest' category (as part of a cover package on global warming).

Chris's 2005 article for Seed magazine on the Dover evolution trial was included in the volume Best American Science and Nature Writing 2006. In 2006, Chris also won the 'Preserving Core Values in Science' award from the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals.

Chris was born in Mesa, Arizona, and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana; he graduated from Yale University in 1999, where he wrote a column for the Yale Daily News. Before becoming a freelance writer, Chris worked for two years at The American Prospect as a writing fellow, then staff writer, then online editor (where he helped to create the popular blog Tapped).

Chris has contributed to a variety of other publications in recent years, including Wired, Seed, New Scientist, Slate, Salon, Mother Jones, Legal Affairs, Reason, The American Scholar, The New Republic, The Washington Monthly, Columbia Journalism Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. In addition, Chris's blog, 'The Intersection,' was a recipient of Scientific American's 2005 Science and Technology web award, which noted that 'science is lucky to have such a staunch ally in acclaimed journalist Chris Mooney.'

Chris speaks regularly at academic meetings, bookstores, university campuses, and other events. Recent university stops include Yale University, Princeton, Harvard, Rockefeller University, and MIT. Other venues where Chris has spoken include San Francisco's famous Commonwealth Club, Town Hall Seattle, and acclaimed bookstores like Cody's in Berkeley, California.

Chris has also been featured regularly by the national media. He has appeared on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, CSPAN's Book TV, Fresh Air With Terry Gross, NPR's Science Friday (here and here), and The Al Franken Show, among many other television and radio programs. He has been profiled by The Toronto Star and The Seattle Times, and interviewed by many outlets including Grist and Mother Jones.

Hepeng Jia

After receiving his master degree in history at Tsinghua University in 1999, Mr. Jia became a science reporter of China Daily. He has received the most awards in the China Daily group.

He is the writer of many journalism papers, include the one - SARS, Bird flu and Transparency - presented at the Fourth World Conference of Science Journalists in Montreal, Canada. Since June 2005, he has been working as SciDev.Net's regional coordinator for China and is responsible for the Chinese version China Gateway of SciDev.Net. Since 2006, he has organised several science communication workshops for China's science journalists. Now Jia also writes for Science as a freelancer.

11.00 am to 12.30 pm

Investigating scientific fraud

Savoy 1

Warwick Anderson

Professor Warwick Anderson AM is the Chief Executive Officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council. He brings to the position extensive experience in health research leadership and management. He has made a strong contribution to the activities of the NHMRC since 1991, including chairing the NHMRC's Research Committee for two three-year terms between 1997-2003.

Professor Anderson's previous appointments included Head of School of Biomedical Sciences at Monash University (2001 - 06) and prior to that, Deputy Director, of The Baker Institute.

Professor Anderson obtained a Bachelor of Science (Hons) from the University of New England in 1968 and his PhD from University of Adelaide in 1972. He then spent three postdoctoral years at the Harvard Medical School in the USA, before returning to the University of Sydney and then The Baker Institute.

He has published over 150 scientific papers, primarily in the area of hypertension and renal physiology and has made significant contributions over many years to the community, research societies and numerous Boards and Committees.

For his service to health and medical research through leadership roles with the National Health and Medical Research Council, to the development of medical science at Monash University, and to hypertension and renal physiology research, Professor Anderson was made a Member of the Order of Australia in January 2005.

In April 2006 the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon Tony Abbott MP appointed Professor Anderson as the Chief Executive Officer of the NHMRC. The appointment commenced on 7 June 2006, and is for a five-year term until 2011.

Philip Campbell

Philip Campbell is Editor-in-Chief of Nature and Nature Publications. His postgraduate work was in astrophysics and atmospheric physics.

He has worked with the UK Office of Science and Technology, the European Commission and the US National Institutes of Health on issues relating to science and its impacts in society. He is a trustee of Cancer Research UK.

Hepeng Jia

After receiving his master degree in history at Tsinghua University in 1999, Mr. Jia became a science reporter of China Daily. He has received the most awards in the China Daily group.

Phil Vardy

Phil Vardy has had several careers. He was first a meteorologist (He wintered in Antarctica in 1971). After breaking his back in a motorcycle accident, he became a biologist and worked at the Foundation 41 Birth Defects Research Institute in Sydney where he discovered the scientific frauds of William McBride.

After completing a PhD (developmental biology) Phil published widely in top scientific journals including Nature. He then became a sports administrator (He founded the Australian disabled sailing movement and was vice president of the International Foundation for Disabled Sailing for eight years. Currently, he is president of Sailability World. He has responsibility for sailing in the 2008 Paralympic Games). In his retirement, Phil completed a law degree.

Hee Won Kim

Kim, Hee Won is a staff reporter of Hankook Daily Newspaper, Seoul. She began her career at Hankook Daily in 1993. She has been covering science and medicine since 1998.

For her professional coverage on Dr. Hwang scandal, she won an award of 'Science Journalist of the Year' from Korean Science Reporters Association, and an award of 'Woman Journalist of the Year' From Korea Woman Journalist Association last year. She studied Science Communication Program at graduate school of Sogang University. (M.SC) and she studied Anthropology at Seoul National University (B.A).
Tel: +82-2-724-2312 (office), Fax: +82-2-739-0266 E-mail: h930811@empal.com

The reporting of nuclear power

Savoy 2

Harriet Oster

Harriet is a freelance journalist in Finland. She has a M.Eng. in chemistry and has worked for more than 20 years in journalism, most of the time at a Finnish weekly dealing with matters in technology and business. She deals a lot with energy and environmental questions.

Ziggy Switkowski

Dr Ziggy Switkowski has been the Chief Executive Officer of Telstra Corporation, Optus Communications, and Kodak (Australasia). He is currently a non-executive director of Suncorp, Tabcorp, Healthscope and Opera Australia.

Most recently he was the Chair of the Prime Minister's Review of Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Power which handed down its report in December last year. This month he was appointed Chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization

Jim Falk

Professor Jim Falk is the foundation Director of the Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society (ACSIS) at the University of Melbourne. He is also Convenor of the Climate Adaptation - Science and Policy Initiative (which brings together interdisciplinary research in climate adaptation across the faculties and research centres of the University). His PhD is in theoretical physics, but over the last 25 years he has specialised in the study of the nature, impact and management of science and technology in their social contexts. He has written books on global politics, climate change, and the politics of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons.

Peter Calamai

Peter Calamai, a veteran foreign correspondent, returned to his first journalistic love in 1998 when he became the national science reporter the Toronto Star, Canada's largest circulation daily newspaper. He first covered the science beat for the Southam newspapers a quarter century earlier.

In between Calamai, 63, reported extensively from Europe and the Soviet bloc, the Middle East, more than 35 countries in Africa, the Canadian West, Washington D.C. and Ottawa. Assignments included a half-dozen armed conflicts, the Apollo space flights, natural disasters, three papal tours, 'far too many' election campaigns and extended series of articles about literacy, Einstein's scientific legacy and Arctic science.

Calamai's reporting has received numerous honours, including three National Newspaper Awards. Canada's highest print journalistic recognition. A physics graduate from McMaster University in Hamilton.

Calamai spends his spare time pursuing rare cowrie shells, the genetic perfection of tomatoes and mastering the RAW format in digital photography. His pseudo-scientific studies revolve around Sherlock Holmes, where he has published extensively. He is a contributing editor of Cosmos.

Hujun Li

Mr. Hujun Li is a science writer of Southern Weekly, a very influential Chinese newspaper known for its investigative journalism. He got a master degree in polymer science from Sichuan University, China, and worked briefly as a building materials engineer. He was a 2003-04 Knight science journalism fellow at MIT, also a winner of 2004 AAAS Fellowships for Reporters in Developing Regions.

Hanns Neubert

Hanns Neubert has been self employed as a freelance science journalist in Germany for the past ten years in the areas of print, television and radio. He has contributed to a number of German magazines and newspapers such as "Geo", "Stern", "Welt", "P.M." and "Science" (USA/UK).

Hanns Neubert is the President of TELI, the German association for science and technology journalists and vice president of EUSJA (European Union of ScienceJournalists Associations).

Hanns-J Neubert worked for seven years as the press officer at the German federal Ministry for Science and Technology and as a communication consultant to a number of knowledge based companies such as ESOF 2004 (Stockholm)).

He has trained science journalists for German papers such as the "Zeit" and "Stern", and the Northern German Broadcasting NDR- TV and in Africa. He has also provided media training for young scientists (e.g. EMBO Heidelberg).

He has authored a number of books, such as "The World Atlas of the Oceans", "100 Most Beautiful National Parks of the World", 100 Most Beautiful Cities of the World".

Uncovering the hobbit, Homo floresiensis

Savoy 3

Richard (Bert) Roberts

Professor Richard 'Bert' Roberts received his training in the Earth sciences, and developed a particular research interest in methods of dating archaeological and palaeontological events of the last half-million years. To do this, he helped establish a luminescence dating laboratory at the University of Wollongong.

Bert has applied luminescence dating to questions about landscape evolution, climate change, megafaunal extinction and the human colonisation of Australia and Indonesia. In the 1990s, Bert dated the oldest-known archaeological sites in Australia and showed that people first reached this continent 50,000–60,000 years ago.

He has since redated the controversial Jinmium and Lake Mungo archaeological sites, and has contributed to debates on the age of Aboriginal rock art and the timing and cause of mass extinction of the Australian megafauna.

In 2004, Bert was involved in the discovery and dating of the 'Hobbit', a new species of tiny human found on the eastern Indonesian island of Flores. His current archaeological projects involve dating of stone-age sites in Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian peninsula and sub-Saharan Africa, and his interests in megafaunal extinction extend from arid Australia to the arctic tundra of Siberia, in search of the remains of the last woolly mammoths.

Chris Turney

Dr Chris Turney is a British geologist currently based at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Chris did the radiocarbon dating on the 'Hobbit' fossil of Flores, Indonesia that hit the headlines worldwide in 2004. He has published over 60 scientific papers and magazine articles and done numerous media interviews thanks to his infectious enthusiasm for working out what happened in the past and what this means for the future. He has recently published a popular science book with Palgrave Macmillan called 'Bones, Rocks and Stars: The Science of When Things Happened'.

Chris is currently finishing a second book called ''Ice, Mud and Blood: Exploring the climate of ages past'. His popular science web site is www.christurney.com

Deborah Smith

Deborah Smith is Science Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald. She has specialised in science reporting for most of her 25 year career with the Fairfax newspaper group, as well as holding positions as a foreign correspondent and page editor. She won the Eureka Prize for Science Journalism in 2005 for a body of work including reports on the discovery of Homo floresiensis.

New Media: podcasting, Second Life and the future of the web

Kensington Room

Christopher Smith

Chris Smith is the Naked Scientist. He set up the Naked Scientists radio show and podcast, which he presents, together with its supporting website, thenakedscientists.com. The Naked Scientists programme is broadcast by the BBC and syndicated to other radio stations internationally. Chris also makes The Nature Podcast in collaboration with the journal Nature, and he won the BioScience Federation prize for science communication in 2006. When he's not on the radio, Chris is a doctor and a virologist at Cambridge University.

Ian Allan

Ian Allen is the Executive Producer for New Media Science & Health at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. This unit produces original and innovative content for the online medium, as well as acting as the online gateway for all ABC TV and Radio science & Health content.

The ABC's science portal has become a popular and vibrant part of ABC Online, with its own News in Science service, strong online forums and communities, features and podcasts, and increasingly, made-for broadband short and long-format science programs such as 'the experiMentals" and "Talking Science". (In 2006 ABC Science served an average of 1.5 million page impressions per week).

Ian's involvement with online media began in 1995 when he built the ABC's very first website for the science & technology program Hot Chips. Prior to digital media he was a television producer for ABC science programs such as Quantum, A Question of Survival, and Hot Chips.

James Massola

James Massola is Assistant Editor of www.eurekastreet.com.au. He is also the Production Editor of www.jesuit.org.au, www.jesuitcommunications.com.au and www.madonnamagazine.com.au, and soon the Web Content Editor for the Society of Editors - http://www.socedvic.org/. He has written for Eureka Street, The Age, Online Opinion, Australian Catholics, Crikey, and Kairos. He is completing a Masters in International Relations.

Abigail E Thomas

In her role as Head, Strategic Innovation & Development at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Abigail is responsible for strategic research and development and the creation of innovative projects utilising new media platforms and technologies across the ABC. This includes user generated content applications, interactive television, video downloads and virtual worlds such as Second Life.

2.00 to 3.30 pm

A code of ethics for science journalists

Savoy 1

Rob Morrison

Rob has written 40 books on science and natural history and has been a science and environment broadcaster for forty years on television and radio. He co-hosted the long-running national television program Curiosity Show, which screened in 14 countries. He currently produces the environmental segment on NEXUS, the television program of Australia's Asia Pacific Service, which screens in 40 countries.

He has won numerous awards, including the Michael Daley Award, Skeptics Eureka Prize and the inaugural SA Premier's Award for Excellence in Science Communication. Rob is Patron of National Science Week SA, a member of the Board of the newly established Australian Science Media Centre and Chair or a member of many Boards and Councils of environment and conservation organisations. He is currently Vice-President, Australian Science Communicators.

Chris Warren

Christopher Warren Christopher Warren is President of the International Federation of Journalists, the global organisation of journalists representing 500,000 journalists in 135 independent organisations in 106 countries. The President is elected by the triennial Congress, and Chris has held this position since 1998. Previously, Chris was Senior Vice-President (1995-1998) and regional adviser (1988-1992). Chris Warren is also the Federal Secretary of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, which represents the people who inform and entertain Australia: journalists, photographers performers, film makers, technicians. It acts as the professional lobby group, training organisation and trade union for its members. Chris has been federal secretary since the Alliance was formed in 1992.

Bob Williamson

Bob Williamson worked on human gene isolation for thalassaemia, cystic fibrosis, ataxia, heart disease and Alzheimer disease, and conducted the first non-viral gene therapy trial for cystic fibrosis. He has recently stepped down from the Directorship of the Murdoch Institute in Melbourne, and remains Professor of Medical Genetics at the University of Melbourne and Chair of the National Committee for Medicine of the Australian Academy of Science. He is a Fellow of the Academy, and of the Royal Society, and has also been involved in many studies of the ethics of human genetic and stem cell research

Wolfgang C Goede

Wolfgang C. Goede Wolfgang C. Goede has been a science journalist for 25 years and is senior editor for Germany's leading popular science magazine P.M. He has a master's degree in communication science and political science from the University of Munich. Wolfgang has published studies and essays on the history of science journalism, its quality and relationship to civil society.

A peer review of peer review

Savoy 2

Philip Campbell

Philip Campbell is Editor-in-Chief of Nature and Nature Publications. His postgraduate work was in astrophysics and atmospheric physics. He has worked with the UK Office of Science and Technology, the European Commission and the US National Institutes of Health on issues relating to science and its impacts in society. He is a trustee of Cancer Research UK.

Warwick Anderson

Professor Anderson's previous appointments included Head of School of Biomedical Sciences at Monash University (2001-06) and prior to that, Deputy Director, of The Baker Institute.

In April 2006 the Minister for Health and Ageing, the Hon. Tony Abbott MP appointed Professor Anderson as the Chief Executive Officer of the NHMRC. The appointment commenced on 7 June 2006, and is for a five-year term until 2011.

John Rennie

John Rennie has been the editor in chief of Scientific American magazine since 1994. During his tenure the magazine has won National Magazine Awards for its single-topic issues What You Need to Know about Cancer (Sept. 1996) and A Matter of Time (Sept. 2002). He is a frequent commentator on scientific matters for television and radio.

Carol Nader

Carol Nader is health editor at The Age. She has covered the health round for three years, and regularly writes about health policy, medical research, mental health, fertility issues, the politics of abortion and pharmaceuticals. She has been with The Age for 10 years.

Last year, she was part of a team that worked on a major investigative series on the financial links between doctors and big drug companies. The series analysed whether or not doctors are truly independent professionals any more, how drug companies market drugs to doctors and the government, and whether or not medical research is too influenced by drug company money.

Wise Up - The truth about TV science

Savoy 3

Peter Rees

'Rees is the third MythBuster, or maybe even the first, since the show was his original creation and carries his indelible stamp of twisted scientific innovation.' Keith and Kent Zimmerman, authors, MythBusters - The Explosive Truth Behind Thirty Of The World's Most Perplexing Urban Legends. It may be the best science program on television, in no small part because it does not purport to be a science program at all. John Swartz, The New York Times

Over the last six years Peter single-handedly created, produced and sustained the entire program content for the award winning science television series MythBusters. He has guided the show through seventy episodes, twelve specials and onto screens on every continent and in seven languages.

Prior to MythBusters Peter developed, produced, wrote and directed more than 30 hours of science and technology programming for international broadcast. He successfully tackled topics as diverse as intentional cranial deformation and the deadly 'assassin caterpillar' of Brazil. Peter's work has featured on: BBC2, Discovery Channel USA, Discovery Europe, Discovery Latin America, Discovery Asia, National Geographic Channel, SBS Television Australia, Star TV, Travel Channel Europe, The Learning Channel, Channel 5 UK, The Seven Network Australia, Network Ten Australia and The Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1993 Peter was selected for the prestigious Charles Heidsieck International Travel Race. Eight international teams competed, with the race won by the first team to circumnavigate the globe by land and sea. After 103 days, Peter and his team emerged victorious. The four episode documentary series about this adventure aired in seven countries to impressive ratings.

Although born in Ridgecrest California, Peter grew up in Sydney Australia. He is a graduate of Australia's leading broadcasting and production institution, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He also has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, a Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Studies and is qualified to drive a forklift and shoot a handgun safely in the State of California.

Catherine Marciniak

Catherine is one of Australia's leading documentary makers and has a passion for telling stories that explore the society in which we live. She is currently the Series Director and Principal Cinematographer of Film Australia's landmark cross-platform project 'The Life Series' with the first installment 'Life at 1' being launched in 2006 on the ABC. This series blends reality television with the scientific findings of the largest longitudinal study ever conducted on Australian children.

Catherine's past credits include: Episode Director of the Australian adaptation of "Who Do You Think You Are", Steel City, Grey Voyagers, Hospital - an Unhealthy Business, Stories from a Children's Hospital and The Gamblers. From 2004-2005, she was the Series Producer for ABC-TV's Compass program.

Nalaka Gunawardene

Nalaka Gunawardene is Director and CEO of TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP, www.tveap.org), a media foundation that specialises in communicating sustainable development and social justice issues through television, video and the web. He works with producers and film-makers from across Asia, creating and distributing editorially independent factual content to broadcast, educational and civil society users in the world's largest region. Trained as a science writer and development journalist, Nalaka counts 20 years of experience in communications, initially in the mainstream media and later in the development sector. He is a trustee of SciDev.Net and a Board member of Panos South Asia.

Good for You: public health and public interest

Kensington Room

Simon Chapman

Simon Chapman, is Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney. He is a sociologist whose PhD examined the semiotics of cigarette advertising. He is author of 13 books and major government reports, 201 papers and 124 letters and commentaries in peer reviewed journals.

His books include Over our dead bodies: Gun law reform after Port Arthur (Sydney:Pluto 1998); The Last Right? Australians take sides on the right to die (Sydney:Mandarin 1995); The Fight for Public Health: Principles and Practice of Media Advocacy (BMJ Books 1994 with Deborah Lupton); Tobacco in the Third World: a resource Atlas (International Organisation of Consumers' Unions 1990) Great Expectorations: Advertising and the tobacco industry (London: Comedia, 1986);and The Lung Goodbye: tactics for counteracting the tobacco industry in the 1980s (IOCU 1983). His Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control: Making Smoking History will be published by Blackwells (Oxford) in 2007. He is a regular writer on public health matters in leading Australian newspapers.

His main research interests are in tobacco control, media discourses on health and illness, and risk communication. He teaches annual courses in Public Health Advocacy and Tobacco Control in the University of Sydney's MPH program. In 1997 he won the World Health Organisation's World No Tobacco Day Medal; in 1999, the National Heart Foundation of Australia's gold medal; in 2006 the Thoracic Society of Australia's President's Award; and in 2003 he was voted by his international peers to be awarded the American Cancer Society's Luther Terry Award for outstanding individual leadership in tobacco control.

In 2005, his research on the tobacco industry was selected by the NHMRC as being one of its 'top 10' projects. He is editor of the British Medical Journal's specialist journal, Tobacco Control. He is a life member of the Australian Consumers' Association and was its chairman 1999-2002. He was a key member of the Coalition for Gun Control which won the 1996 Australian Human Rights & Equal Opportunity Commission's community Human Rights award.

Catriona Bonfiglioli

Dr Catriona Bonfiglioli PhD Grad Dip Journalism Studies BA (Hons) Catriona is a medical journalist and public health media analyst with extensive experience in the mainstream and specialist medical media. Catriona was Australian Associated Press's National Medical Correspondent from 1993 to 1996 after which she spent two years as a medical writer with Australian Doctor.

In 1997, Catriona was the Reuter Fellow in Medical Journalism at Green College, Oxford. Catriona left full-time medical writing to pursue her doctoral research examining the portrayal of genetic technologies in the Australian news media, including the issues of cloning, genetically modified foods and the Human Genome Project.

After gaining her PhD in 2005 from the University of Sydney, Catriona joined the NSW Centre for Overweight and Obesity as a research coordinator. Her current research interests include the contribution of news media coverage to public discourse and debates about obesity, overweight, physical activity and genetic technologies. Catriona is a co-author of research on obesity in television news presented at the International Congress on Obesity in Sydney 2006. Catriona keeps up her journalist credentials by working part time at Australian Associated Press, writing and editing.

Sophie Scott

Sophie Scott is the national medical reporter for Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Her stories appear on the ABC's flagship news bulletin at 7.00pm, Lateline, Stateline and 7.30 Report. Her reports can be seen throughout the Asia-Pacific Region, through ABC's Australian TV network. She can also be heard on ABC radio.

In 2005, Sophie Scott received the Health Research in the Media award at the Research Australia 'Thank You' Day Awards in recognition of her ability to communicate complex information in a way that the general community can easily understand. In 2004, she won the Australian Museum Eureka award for medical reporting. Sophie Scott was a television newsreader for ABC Tasmania from 1998 to 2000. She is the Vice President of the Australian Medical Writers Association and is on the board of the Australian Medical Association Charitable Foundation NSW. Her first book titled 'Live a Longer Life' will be published by ABC books in May.

Christina Scott

She was commissioned to write a biography of Nelson Mandela shortly after moving to Cape Town, writes for SciDev.Net, mentors reporters in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria through the WFSJ, has a strange accent which is heard frequently on radio and continues to frighten scientists by providing analysis, assessment (and even encouragement!) of their media outreach.

Developing communication strategies (a workshop offered by the ASC)

Connaught Room

Cathy Sage

Cathy Sage - Principal, SageWords B.A., Dip. Ed, Grad. Dip. Agriculture, Grad. Management Qualification (GMQ) Cathy Sage, of SageWords, has a background in science, education, communication and marketing. She has extensive experience in devising and generating communication strategies, reports, leaflets, media and associated marketing material for a range of national firms and agencies. SageWords, established in 1996 and based in Melbourne, Australia, specialises in understanding communication needs and translating complex concepts into simple messages for a mix of clients.

Anne Leitch

Anne Leitch is Resource Futures Program Communicator with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems and has a background in science, journalism and communication. Her Masters research investigated the status of communication planning in natural resource management. Her interests lie in strategic communication of complex and controversial issues and she has been involved in the release of several major studies into resource issues with CSIRO. Anne is currently on study leave working towards a PhD with CSIRO and the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. Her project aims to understand the social resilience to climate change of communities along the coast of the Great Barrier Reef.

Marina Hurley

Dr Marina Hurley teaches plain-English science writing to science professionals from all walks of life: including technicians, students, engineers, science journalists and research scientists. Dr Hurley has a background in forest ecology, agriculture and entomology. Established in 2005, Writing Clear Science offers tuition, advice and assistance on all stages of project & document development, from initial design through to publication

Roger Edwards

Dr. Roger Edwards is an entrepreneurial executive and engineer, with a hands-on experience of operational facets in both large and small industry as well as academe. He has worked at executive and operational management positions in governance, commercial, R&D, production, technology, engineering, OHS&E and Quality functions.

He has gained this experience in both light and heavy industries and research organisations, and covers the following sectors medical devices, marine engineering, plastics, paints, chemicals, waste management, packaging, food, as well as some time in therapeutic goods regulatory control and more recently in the social sciences.

His biomedical technology experience includes development and clinical trialling of blood detoxification therapies; inventing an artificial artery and its novel manufacturing process as well as representing industry on a Ministerial Committee advising the Minister of Health on the safety and efficacy of medical devices.

More recently, Roger has been the Managing Director of a Spin-Off focused on commercialising some neural diagnostic technology invented within Monash University. His other broad-based industrial career has focused upon technology management, development and commercialisation.

Tony St Clair

Tony is currently a consultant. Prior to this he served as Chief Executive of the Federated Farmers of New Zealand for eight years. Agriculture contributes 17 percent to New Zealand's GDP and the organisation has 19,000 farm members.

Tony has been on multiple committees at CEO level within New Zealand looking at trade, food safety,human capacity building in agriculture,emergency response groups for adverse events and biosecurity. He is also on the Prime Ministers advisory group.

Prior to this he has been the agricultural representative for New Zealand at WTO (Seattle ,Cancun); at Cairns GroupFarm Leaders, CER9; chair for the Australia New Zealand Business Council for 2004 and Executive Director of the Victorian Farmers Federation

He has extensive experience in agriculture and food safety and was runner up for Agricultural Communicator of the Year in 2004-05.

4.00 to 5.30 pm

The role of scientific journals in breaking news

Savoy 1

Philip Campbell

Pallab Ghosh

Pallab Ghosh is a Science Correspondent for BBC News. He began his career in 1984 at the British Electronics and Computer Press before joining New Scientist as the magazine's Science News Editor. Pallab Joined BBC News in 1989, where he went on to become a Senior Producer on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme. He has won the Media Natura Environment Award and BT's Technology Journalist of the Year.

Although he enjoys good fun science stories he's been among a new breed of science journalists attempting to do more than just cheer lead science. With many develop-ments, particularly in the biosciences, having important social, political and ethical dimensions he's tried to adopt a constructively critical approach.

He has been head of the Association of British Science Writers and is an executive Board Member of the World Federation of Science Journalists. In these roles he has attempted to promote a more "Kick-Ass" approach to science journalism with the introduction of national and international prizes for investigative journalism. Most other science prizes in his opinion reward propaganda.

Pallab has also introduced schemes to get people from more diverse backgrounds into the higher levels of science journalism. The profession, especially in the UK, is drawn from a privileged elite. He believes that those reporting on scientific issues that increasingly have a social dimension will be better equipped if they are more representative of their community.

Leigh Dayton

Leigh Dayton is an award-winning writer and broadcaster, specialising in the impact of science, technology, environment and medicine on news and current events. For nearly 20 years, Leigh has worked as a newspaper and magazine reporter and columnist, as well as a radio and television producer and on-air personality. Currently, she is The Australian newspaper's Science Writer.

Geoff McFadden

Geoff McFadden is a Federation Fellow at Melbourne University. He discovered a plant-like chloroplast in the malaria parasite and hopes to cure malaria with herbicides. He has published numerous papers in Nature and Science, is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences. Geoff lives near Bells Beach and surfs as much as he can.

Purifying a Poisoned Planet

Savoy 2

Stevan Green

Stevan Green is a Mechanical Engineering graduate from the University of Western Australia. He has worked for a number of major organisations, including Shell, BHP Billiton and the North West Shelf Venture, providing him with a wealth of local and international experience and knowledge of the engineering, minerals and energy industries. Stevan has spent much of his professional life finding innovative solutions to issues in a number of diverse industries including chemicals, oil and gas, minerals and food. Stevan's experience includes responsibility for the design and construction of major greenfield and brownfield production and process plant, leading commercial negotiations for large international supply agreements and development of strategic business plans.

Stevan is currently CEO of the Co-operative Research Centre for Sustainable Resource Processing (CSRP) a joint venture between industry, research providers and government which is researching for innovative ways to help satisfy society's material needs with a fraction of current ecological impact.

Jack Ng

Jack is a Principal Research Fellow with the National Research Centre for Environmental Toxicology at the University of Queensland.

Jack is a DABT certified toxicologist and NATA recognised study director for GLP testing of chemicals. He is the program leader of Metals and Metalloids including arsenic at the centre and program leader for risk assessment in the Cooperative Research Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation of the Environment.

His postgraduate students study environmental toxicology of metals and natural toxins relevant to human health.

Ravi Naidu

Professor Ravi Naidu is foundation professor and the inaugural Director of the Australian Research Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation. Since July 1995 he has been the Managing Director of CRC CARE. He has researched environmental contaminants, bioavailability, and remediation for over 20 years and has co-authored over 300 technical publications and co-edited 8 books in the field of soil and environmental sciences including remediation of contaminated sites.

In recognition of his contribution to environmental research he was awarded Gold Award in environmental science in 1998 by Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, elected to Fellow of Soil Science Society America in 2000 and also Fellow of Soil Science Society of New Zealand in 2004 and Fellow of American Society of Agronomy in 2006. He is the Chair of the Standards Australia-New Zealand Technical Committee on Sampling and Analyses of Contaminated Soils, Chair of the International Committee on Bioavailability and Risk Assessment, Chair of the of International Union of Soil Sciences' Commission for Soil Degradation Control, Remediation and Reclamation, President of the International Society on Trace Element Biogeochemistry and sitting member of the Victorian EPA Contaminated Sites Auditor Panel.

You are not your brain scan: critical reporting on the mind sciences

Kensington Room

Deborah Blum

Deborah Blum is a Pulitzer-prize winning science writer and Professor of Journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of four books, most recently Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death - named a 2006 Best Book of the Year by The Boston Globe and the Los Angeles Times.

As a newspaper journalist, she won the Pulitzer in 1992 for a series on ethical issues in primate research, the subject of her first book The Monkey Wars, followed by Sex on the Brain: The Biological Differences between Men and Women and Love at Goon Park: Harry Harlow and the Science of Affection. She is also a co-editor of A Field Guide for Science Writers, (Oxford 2005); currently under contract to write a book about poison and murder in the early 20th century; and continues to write on science for publications such The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Times of London.

Deborah serves on the program committee of the World Federation of Science Journalists, the Board on Life Sciences of the National Research Council, and is a past-president of the National Association of Science Writers (US). She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, two sons, and a very large boxer.

Fred Mendelsohn

Frederick Mendelsohn is Director of the Howard Florey Institute, Australia's largest brain research centre. He is also R Douglas Wright Professor of Experimental Physiology and Medicine at the University of Melbourne. He held a Personal Chair in Medicine at University of Melbourne until he joined the Florey in 1997. He has also been a Senior Physician at the Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre.

Professor Mendehlson is Past President of the Australian Neuroscience Society and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2003. He received an Order of Australia in 2004. The Howard Florey Institute conduct 'fundamental research that may be developed into treatments to combat brain disorders and into new medical practices - including research into Parkinsons disease, stroke, traumatic brain and spinal chord injury, addiction, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, dementia, Huntington's disease and schizophrenia.

Jonica Newby

Dr Jonica Newby started her professional life spaying cats, vaccinating dogs, and attempting to castrate a horse with only a couple of farm hands for anaesthetic assistance. But the glamour of veterinary practice soon wore off, and ten years ago, she answered the siren call of science journalism. She began on familiar turf - writing and presenting a TV series for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's science unit on the domestication of animals, called The Animal Attraction. She also wrote the ABC book of the same name.

For the last 5 years, she has been a reporter/producer for ABC TV's flagship science program, Catalyst. While she now reports on all aspects of science, her original interest in animal minds has led to a natural interest in the minds of Homo sapiens. She has covered the gamut from teen brains to the science of lie detection, and for her sins, has been fMRI'd four times. Last year, she won Australia's premier science journalism prize, the Eureka Prize for Science Journalism.

Natasha Mitchell

Natasha Mitchell is host and producer of the award -winning radio program 'All in the Mind' on ABC Radio National, which explores the mind, brain and human behaviour in eclectic ways with thinkers worldwide. A science and health journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for 10 years, her work in radio, TV and online has been recognised by a number of awards including three Gold World Medals at the New York Radio Festivals, and the Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Broadcast Media Award in 2004, 2002 and 2001; amongst others.

In 2005, Natasha was granted a prestigious Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT/Harvard. In a past life she qualified as an engineer, but she threw in a PhD to pursue what she really loves - chatting to people about the marvels and idiosyncrasies of the human condition. In 2004, Natasha presented/produced the 4 part series, Parched Lands, with the BBC World Service - for which she took listeners across the deserts of the world.

Creating clear science messages (a workshop offered by the ASC)

Connaught Room

Michelle Riedlinger

After many fits and starts and chocolate biscuit breaks, Michelle finally completed her PhD and came back to work full time with the Econnect team (Econnect Communications).

When Michelle isn't networking, (i.e. socialising!), she's writing about science and facilitating workshops. Her expertise is in writing, research and qualitative analysis, editing, and design and layout of publications. She often helps out with pub-science events in Brisbane, whipping participants and the audience into shape with her wit as the "roving mike" girl.

Before joining Econnect, Michelle spent six years as Communication Manager at the CRC for Tropical Plant Pathology. She became interested in collaborative research, and began a PhD in Collaborative Communication Networks in Environmental Research Organisations. It seemed like a good idea

at the time.

She took a break in 2002 to help organise communication workshops at the World Sustainability Summit and the International Science Communication Conference in South Africa. With that pesky thesis now complete, she spends her free time planning cycle trips with her friends.

Michelle's qualifications include: Diploma of Science, Bachelor of Arts (Honours), PhD (Communication)

Anne Leitch

Simon Torok

Dr Simon Torok works in communication and marketing for CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, managing a team to raise awareness of the work of more than 700 staff and others in the Division.

Simon has a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication from the Australian National University, and completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences, examining Australia's historical temperature record.

He has worked as editor of CSIRO's Helix magazine, performed with the Questacon Science Circus, and worked as a climate change communicator in England.

Simon has done science talkback segments on radio and has published many newspaper, magazine and scientific journal articles. Simon has also co-authored, with Paul Holper, 12 popular science books, including Inventing Millions, 101 Great Killer Creatures and the best-selling Amazing Science series for children, all published by ABC Books, and a fiction series entitled Who Dun It published by Pan McMillan.

Maria Taylor

Maria Taylor is a print journalist, editor and award-winning documentary film-maker with a dozen environmental education titles to her credit. A resident of Canberra, she most recently managed her own science and environmental communication bureau where she edited and produced a technology-transfer newspaper and various government magazines, before deciding a quiet and focused stint in academia sounded inviting. She is now in her second year of PhD studies at the Centre for Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University - she's looking at the past 20 years of climate change communication in Australia and what can lessons can be drawn from that experience.

Tom Lowe

Tom Lowe's research at the Tyndall Centre, UK, has focussed upon contemporary representations of climate change and their effects upon public perceptions and behaviour. In particular, Tom is interested in the portrayal of climate change as a 'dangerous', 'abrupt' or 'catastrophic' phenomenon; an image which communicates urgency and importance but which does not necessarily translate into public action. His international research, which has included analysis of the effects of the film 'The Day After Tomorrow' upon the public, provides a useful insight into the use of the 'disaster' narrative in the communication of climate change risk to the public.

Wednesday

9.00 am to 10.15 am

Reporting with climate change

Savoy Ballroom

Ian Lowe

He directed Australia's Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He helped develop the framework for the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook reports and has acted as a referee for the IPCC, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program and the Millennium Assessment.

Kevin Hennessy

Kevin Hennessy is a Principle Research Scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. He has been a member of CSIRO's Climate Impact Group (http://www.dar.csiro.au/impacts) for 18 years, and became Deputy Leader in 2005. The Group analyses past changes in climate, develops regional climate change projections and assesses potential impacts. He is a member of the NSW Greenhouse Advisory Panel and a Coordinating Lead Author of the 'Australia and New Zealand' chapter of the forthcoming IPCC assessment of 'Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability'.

Geoff Love

Dr Geoff Love was appointed as the Director of Meteorology in August 2003. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) is an Executive Agency in the Environment and Water Resources portfolio. As Chief Executive Officer of the Bureau, Dr Love reports to the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, and to the Australian Parliament, on the Bureau's overall performance.

Prior to taking up the position of Director of Meteorology, Dr Love spent 18 months as Secretary of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland. In this role he played a major part in developing the process for, and scientific content of, the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). Since returning to Australia Dr Love has been elected to the IPCC Bureau and asked to act as a Review Editor for two chapters of the AR4.

Since 1987 Dr Love has provided technical and scientific leadership to the global meteorological community through active participation in the work of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). He has contributed substantially to the work of its largest Technical Commission, the Commission for Basic Systems (CBS) through chairing its Working Group on Data Management for eight years, followed by four years as the Commission's vice-president and two years as its president.

Chris Mooney

Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine and a senior correspondent for the American Prospect. He focuses on issues at the intersection of science and politics, and is author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science, dubbed 'a landmark in contemporary political reporting' by Salon.com and a 'well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists' by Scientific American. His next book, entitled Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming, will be published in June of 2007 by Harcourt Books.

Simon Torok

Dr Simon Torok works in communication and marketing for CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, managing a team to raise awareness of the work of more than 700 staff and others in the Division. Simon has a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication from the Australian National University, and completed a PhD at the University of Melbourne's School of Earth Sciences, examining Australia's historical temperature record.

He has worked as editor of CSIRO's Helix magazine, performed with the Questacon Science Circus, and worked as a climate change communicator in England. Simon has done science talkback segments on radio and has published many newspaper, magazine and scientific journal articles. Simon has also co-authored, with Paul Holper, 12 popular science books, including Inventing Millions, 101 Great Killer Creatures and the best-selling Amazing Science series for children, all published by ABC Books, and a fiction series entitled Who Dun It published by Pan McMillan.

11.00 am to 12.30 pm

Poles apart but together in science for International Polar Year

Savoy 1

Louis Fortier

Louis Fortier holds the Canada Research Chair on the Response of Arctic Marine Ecosystems to Climate Change at Université Laval. He has led the International North Water Polynya Study and the Canadian Arctic Shelf Exchange Study. He is the Project Leader for the Canadian Research Icebreaker Amundsen and the Scientific Director of ArcticNet, a Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence dedicated to the study of the transforming coastal Canadian Arctic. Louis Fortier was elected "Scientist of Year 2004" by Radio-Canada and "Scientific Personality of 2005" by La Presse and Radio-Canada.

David Hik

Dr. David Hik Executive Director, Canadian International Polar Year Secretariat Professor/Canada Research Chair in Northern Ecology Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada David's research examines the ecology of alpine and tundra ecosystems, particularly interactions between plants and herbivores in a rapidly warming environment. He completed degrees at Queen's, Toronto, and UBC, and spent a year with CSIRO in Canberra before joining the University of Toronto in 1994. He moved to Edmonton in 1999. In 2003, he worked in Ottawa on a variety of Arctic policy issues. He is an editorial advisor for the journal ARCTIC.

Kathleen Conlan

Kathleen Conlan studies the marine life on the polar seafloor. In the Antarctic, she is studying the U.S. McMurdo Station's sewage effects after long-term discharge and following abatement in 2003. In the Arctic, Kathy is studying the effects of upwelling and disturbance by ice scour, methane venting and hydrocarbon extraction. 'Under the Ice', a children's book about her polar diving adventures, won the 2002 Science in Society Children's Book Award.

Stephen Rintoul

Dr Stephen Rintoul was born and educated in the USA and came to Australia in 1990 to join the CSIRO. He has a keen interest in the role of the Southern Ocean in the earth's climate system and has led eight expeditions to the Indian, Pacific and Southern Oceans. His research achievements have been recognised with numerous national and international awards. During the International Polar Year, Dr Rintoul is leading a program known as CASO, which brings together scientists from 18 nations to investigate the role of Antarctic and the Southern Ocean in past, present and future climate.

Michael Stoddard

Michael Stoddart is currently Chief Scientist at the Australian Government Antarctic Division, Department of the Environment and Water Resources. He is a zoologist trained at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, from where he has a DSc. He is a Professorial Fellow in Zoology at the University of Melbourne and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania. He is the Administrator of the 'Census of Antarctic Marine Life', a major project for the International Polar Year. CAML is the lead Antarctic biodiversity project for IPY within the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research's "Evolution and Biodiversity in Antarctica" project. CAML is the highest profile Australian IPY project.

After a postdoctoral fellowship at the Animal Ecology Research Group, University of Oxford he was Lecturer, and later Reader in Zoology at King's College London. He was appointed to the Chair in Zoology at the University of Tasmania of Tasmania in 1985 and as Deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of New England in 1994. He took up his present post with the Antarctic Division in 1998.

Patti Virtue

Patti Virtue is a research scientist/ academic lecturer at the Institute of Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania. She is a marine biochemist who specialises in zooplankton. Patti also lecturers and develops Antarctic programs at both the postgraduate and undergraduate level and supervises postgraduate research students. She is currently leading the development the new 'International Antarctic Institute' (IAI) which is a consortium of global Antarctic educational and research intensive institutes. The development of the IAI is one of the two leading 'Education and Outreach' programs during the International Polar Year.

She has a BSc and teaching degrees - University of Victoria, BC, Canada, and Honours and PhD University of Tasmania. Postdoctorial fellowships- Observatoire Océanologique/Univeristy of Marie Curie ParisVI, and at CSIRO Division of Oceanography Hobart. She is privileged to have spent 7 seasons in Antarctica involved in research covering aspects of biological oceanography, zooplankton (krill) research, penguin and seal studies. She spends a lot of time at sea in the Southern Ocean on the Aurora Australia (the Australian ice breaker) and has spent time at Australian, US and NZ Antarctic bases.

Wildfire: friend or foe? Lessons from a dry continent

Savoy 2

Ross Bradstock

Professor Ross Bradstock was a Principal Research Scientist with the NSW Department of Environment and Conservation. He has recently (mid 2006) taken up the position of Director of the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires at the University of Wollongong - a newly established joint venture between the University, NSW DEC and the NSW Rural Fire Service.

He is also, currently, a project leader in the Bushfire CRC. He has long-standing research interests in fire ecology, plant ecology, fire modelling and landscape ecology, resulting in over 100 publications including the co-edited book 'Flammable Australia: the Fire Regimes and Biodiversity of a Continent' published in 2002. He has co-supervised six successful completed PhD projects and is currently co-supervising a further six research students. He has served on the editorial advisory boards of the International Journal of Wildland Fire and Australian Journal of Botany.

His work is oriented at providing a scientific basis for ecologically sustainable management of fire-prone landscapes. Current research includes landscape modelling of fire regimes and vegetation dynamics in response to global change and bushfire risk modelling. In 2006 he has delivered two keynote addresses on fire, global change and ecological consequences at national (Brisbane) and international conferences (San Diego).

Garry Cook

Garry Cook is an ecologist based in Darwin with nearly 25 years experience conducting research in the fields of fire and landscape ecology, particularly in northern Australia. His work has including estimating the greenhouse gas emissions from bushfires and developing a simulation model to better understand how fire management decisions influence vegetation structure.

Kevin Hennessy

Kevin Hennessy is a Principle Research Scientist at CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research. He has been a member of CSIRO's Climate Impact Group http://www.dar.csiro.au/impacts for 18 years, and became Deputy Leader in 2005. The Group analyses past changes in climate, develops regional climate change projections and assesses potential impacts. He is a member of the NSW Greenhouse Advisory Panel and a Coordinating Lead Author of the "Australia and New Zealand" chapter of the forthcoming IPCC assessment of "Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability".

Richard J Williams

Dick Williams is a plant ecologist with CSIRO Sustainable Ecosystems in Darwin. For the past 25 years he has studied plant community dynamics, fire ecology, and global change in the savannas on northern Australia, and the alpine landscapes of south-eastern Australia. He has published more than 100 scientific research papers, and co-edited several books and Special Issues of scientific journals. He is a Project Leader in the Savanna Cooperative Research Centre, a Member of the NT Bushfires Council, and a past Member of the Biosciences College of Experts of the Australian Research Council. He barracks for Essendon.

Peter Christophersen

Peter is an Indigenous man from the Alligator Rivers region of Kakadu National Park and World Heritage Area in the Northern Territory. Peter's mother is a traditional elder of the Bunitj clan of the northern part of Kakadu National Park.

Peter's wife, Sandra McGregor, is an Indigenous woman with links to the central part of the Park through her mother, Violet. He is working with his family to document the use of traditional fire practices in Kakadu's wetlands. The wetlands he and his family are burning and studying occur in the country held by his mother-in-law under traditional law. Peter and his family are also developing an Indigenous plant nursery to cater for the revegetation needs of a local uranium mine, Ranger. These two projects promote the use of Indigenous knowledge and its integration with Western scientific knowledge.

John Schauble

John Schauble has been a journalist, editor and foreign correspondent with The Age and Sydney Morning Herald. He has also written extensively on bushfires and is author of The Australian Bushfire Safety Guide (HarperCollins 2004). A volunteer brigade captain with CFA, he is completing a research MA on bushfire perceptions.

Kevin O'Loughlin

Kevin O'Loughlin is Chief Executive Officer of the Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre, which was set up in 2003 to coordinate bushfire fire research across Australia and New Zealand. The Bushfire CRC has more than 30 projects working to better understand the complex social, economic and environmental aspects of bushfires. It also has strong international links, especially with researchers in other countries that have similar fire problems.

The topic of major bushfires generates very strong media interest both in Australia and internationally, especially the fires that have threatened major populations.

Kevin is a meteorologist by training but has had extensive experience dealing with the media over the past twenty years related to major fire and weather events. He was responsible for revolutionising the presentation of weather information in Australia in the late 1990's, led an international program on the effective presentation of weather information to the public through the media for ten years, and in represented Australia at the first international conference on broadcast meteorology in Barcelona in 2004.

Climate change and the spread of disease

Savoy 3

Tony McMichael

Tony McMichael directs the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University. He is a medical graduate (Adelaide University) and epidemiologist, long involved in studying environmental influences on health. Before repatriating in 2001 he was Professor of Epidemiology at the well-known London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Since the early 1990s he has been an international leader in promoting research on the health risks of climate change. Since 1993 he has coordinated and reviewed health risk assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He has published widely: books, scientific papers and newspaper articles.

Alistair Woodward

Professor Alistair Woodward is an epidemiologist and Public Health Medicine specialist who is Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Auckland. His areas of expertise include epidemiology, environmental health, the social determinants of health, and the effects of tobacco. Currently a Lead Author for the 4th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he took part also in the 2nd and 3rd Assessments of IPCC. He is Chair of the Public Health Committee of the New Zealand Health Research Council and Chair of the National Screening Advisory Committee.

Science versus business - a clash of cultures

Connaught Room

Clive Cookson

Clive Cookson has worked in science journalism for the whole of his professional life. He graduated in chemistry from Oxford University in 1974. After journalism training on the Luton Evening Post, he became science correspondent of the Times Higher Education Supplement in London and then spent four years in Washington as American Editor of THES. He returned to London in 1981 as technology correspondent of the Times and moved to BBC Radio as science correspondent in 1983. He joined the Financial Times as technology editor in 1987 and has been Science Editor of the FT since 1991.

Rebecca Wilson

Rebecca Wilson has extensive experience in healthcare communication, having provided strategic advice to a range of companies in the private and public sector, particularly relating to media relations, corporate positioning and issues management. She formed Buchan Consulting's Health & Life Sciences Practice in 1998 and works with public and private biotechnology companies, research organisations, pharmaceutical companies, and governments at federal and state level. A former journalist, Rebecca understands the communication challenges associated with commercialising science and technology when dealing with disparate stakeholders. Rebecca is a Member of the CSIRO Health Advisory Board and Burnet Institute Marketing and Communication Advisory Committee.

David Blake

Bioshares is Australia's leading biotech stock report. Bioshares delivers independent investment research to investors on Australian biotech, pharmaceutical and healthcare companies. Bioshares is published by Blake Industry and Market Analysis Pty Ltd. It was first published as a quarterly hardcopy report in 2000. From edition 13 onwards, Bioshares has been published on a weekly basis (48 issues per year) and distributed in an electronic format.

Bioshares has covered the biotech sector from its days of obscurity in 1999, through the boom in 2000, through the downturn in 2001 and 2002 and has been the first choice for investment research by numerous biotech investors in the 2003 biotech upswing.

David Blake founded Blake Industry and Market Analysis Pty Ltd (BIMA) together with Mark Pachacz with the goal of delivering independent investment research about pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to stockbrokers, fund managers and other clients. BIMA is a licensed investment advisory firm with the Australian Investment and Securities Commision.

From 1995 to 1998, David Blake was the Victorian Government's sole Housing Market Analyst, responsible for monitoring trends in Victoria's housing markets. He produced the highly regarded 'Rental Report'. David is a graduate of the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne, and the Securities Institute of Australia.

Simon Grose

Before he became a science journalist, Simon Grose was a contributing editor to Australian Rolling Stone, a TV news reporter, a public affairs officer with CSIRO, and press secretary to a federal minister. From 1994 to earlier this year he was S&T Editor of The Canberra Times, and edited the paper's Computing section from 1998 to 2000. He is currently a freelance writer/editor covering the S&T and ICT sectors, and publishes a daily email bulletin covering the sciences, education, environment and innovation.

2.00 to 3.30 pm

Coal: fuel of the future

Savoy 1

Peter Cook

Dr Cook is a leading expert in geosequestration. He is the Chief Executive of CO2CRC one of the world's largest collaborative research organisations concerned with the deevelopment of greenhouse gas technologies and was a Coordinating lead Author of the IPCC Special Volume on Capture and Storage. He has occupied senior positions in Australia, the UK and France and has received many awards and honours for his work

Doug Holden

Doug Holden is Director of External Relations with the Australian Coal Association and Chair of COAL21 Communications. He has been engaged in the policy process in Canberra for the past 20 years. He has been engaged with the program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal fuelled power generation in Australia for the past four years. Doug works on the program to research, develop and demonstrate low emission coal technologies through the COAL21 National Action Plan and the Australian Coal Association's research and development program, including its $300 million COAL21 fund. Her also chairs COAL21's Communication Group.

Ian Lowe

Ian Lowe AO is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane and holds adjunct appointments at three other universities. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Vice-President of Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He wrote a weekly column for New Scientist for 13 years and received the 2002 Eureka Prize for Promotion of Science. In 2000 he received the Australian Prime Minster's Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement and the Queensland Premier's Millennium Award for Excellence in Science. He directed Australia's Commission for the Future in 1988 and chaired the advisory council that produced the first national report on the state of the environment in 1996. He helped develop the framework for the UNEP Global Environmental Outlook reports and has acted as a referee for the IPCC, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program and the Millennium Assessment.

Coral reefs: going, going, gone?

Savoy 2

Paul Marshall

Dr Paul Marshall leads the Climate Change Response Program for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. His work with a range of scientific, government and non-government organisations has focussed on improving knowledge about the implications of climate change for coral reef ecosystems. Dr Marshall plays a key role in national and international initiatives to adapt coral reef management in the face of climate change, and serves as an advisor to the IPCC Expert Working Group on Detection and Attribution of Climate Change Impacts. He has published numerous scientific papers, book contributions and reports on climate change impacts on tropical marine ecosystems and their management. He is co-author of 'A Reef Manager's Guide to Coral Bleaching', published in conjunction with IUCN.

Charlie (John) Veron

'Charlie' Veron is former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. He has a Masters and two Doctorate degrees in different fields of science and has published 13 books and monographs together with over 100 articles in scientific journals on corals and coral reefs. Harvard University Press are publishing his latest book - on the Great Barrier Reef - later this year. The book, which delves into the geological past and the GBR's future took five years of research and is based on an integration of 2,000 peak publications in many different fields of biological, environmental and geological sciences.

Daniel Gschwind

Daniel Gschwind is the CEO for the Queensland Tourism Industry Council (QTIC), the state's peak tourism body. Daniel is on the board of the National Tourism Alliance (NTA), Tropical Reefs, Ecology, Ecosystems & Forests Ltd and Decipher Technologies. He is represented on many committees, including with the (Federal) Tourism Ministers Advisory Council, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) and the Wet Tropics Management Authority (WTMA). He is an Adjunct Professor to the School of Tourism and Leisure Management of University of Queensland.

Life and death in 2020: how will science respond? (Part 1)

Savoy 3

Ashley Bush

Professor Ashley Bush (MBBS, 1982; PhD, 1992; DPM, 1988, University of Melbourne, Australia; FRANZCP 1989) is currently the ARC Federation Fellow and Head of the Oxidation Disorders Laboratory at the Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria; Professor of Pathology, the University of Melbourne; Lecturer in Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital; and Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience at Cornell University.

He received his PhD in the neurobiology of Alzheimer's disease in 1992 from the University of Melbourne where his mentor was Professor Colin Masters, and he went to the USA as the recipient of the prestigious Harkness Fellowship to do post-doctoral work in Alzheimer's disease with Professor Rudy Tanzi at the Massachusetts General Hospital. The AFAR grant was one of his first grants and was critical in launching his independent scientific career. He set up his own laboratory in 1995 at Massachusetts General Hospital.

His laboratory uncovered the interaction of biometals (copper, zinc and iron) with beta-amyloid that contributes to both oxidation damage and amyloid accumulation in Alzheimer's disease. This has lead to the development of novel therapeutic compounds that are currently in clinical trials. The laboratory has generalized its findings into the oxidation biology of other major neurodegenerative disorders, such as Huntington's disease.

Following the AFAR grant he received several awards including the Beeson Award from the Alliance for Aging Research, the Senator John Hatfield Award and the Zenith Award from the Alzheimer Association, and the Potamkin Prize from the American Academy of Neurology. He has authored over 170 publications.

Abigail E Thomas

Caroline McMillen

Professor McMillen graduated with a BA (Hons) and Doctor of Philosophy at Oxford University before completing her medical training at the University of Cambridge. In 1992, she was appointed as Professor, Chair and Head of the Department of Physiology at the University of Adelaide and she was Executive Dean of the Faculty of Sciences at the University of Adelaide in 1996-1997. In 2005 she took up the position of Pro Vice Chancellor: Research and Innovation at the University of South Australia.

Professor McMillen has an international reputation as a developmental physiologist, she has published more than 150 research papers and has received invitations to present more than 50 Plenary lectures or Symposia at international and national conferences She has served as a member or Chair of the Australian Research Council's Biological Sciences Panel, Chair of the Steering Committee for the National Strategic Workshop on Genomics and Gene Technology and member or Chair of National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC's) Grant Review Panels between 2000 and 2006, and member of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Expert Sub Committee on Promoting and Maintaining Good Health (2005).

Evaluating clinical papers

Kensington Room

David Vaux

David Vaux is Federation Fellow at La Trobe University. He is a molecular biologist whose research field is cell death (apoptosis). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and winner of the Victoria Prize for Science in 2003. His mission is to improve the quality of data in scientific publications, and his hobbies are being sceptical and gossiping.

David Henry

David A. Henry, MB, ChB, MRCP, FRCP, is professor of clinical pharmacology, Faculty of Health, University of Newcastle, director of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Training in Pharmacology and Rational Drug Use; and course controller of the pharmacoepidemiology and pharmacoeconomics training program at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

He works as a consultant physician (general internal medicine) at Mater Misericordiae Hospital in Waratah and a consulting clinical toxicologist to the Newcastle hospitals. He is a former member of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee and former chair of the Economics Subcommittee of PBAC. His research interests include evaluation of drugs, the relationships between the medical profession and pharmaceutical industry, and lay news reporting of new drugs and other medical technologies. With colleagues he established the Media doctor site in 2004 (www.mediadoctor.oeg.au). Sister sites have been established in Canada and the USA and more are planned in Hong Kong and Japan.

Martin Van Der Weyden

Dr Martin Van Der Weyden has been editor of the Medical Journal of Australia since 1995 and is a member of the International Committee of Medical Journal editors. Before becoming editor he was Professor of Haematology at Monash University and consultant physician at the Alfred in Melbourne. He is an author of more than 200 peer reviewed articles and contributes a regular column in the MJA.

Julie Robothom

Julie Robotham is the Sydney Morning Herald's Medical Editor. She is responsible for the paper's coverage of clinical medicine and medical research news, and is particularly interested in illuminating the relationship between social change and health effects such as obesity and infertility

Chris Del Mar

Professor Chris Del Mar is Dean of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University, Gold Coast, Queensland. He has undertaken research into health services and also clinical areas. He has published over 200 research papers, reviews, book chapter and books. He is a Coordinating Editor of the international Cochrane Collaboration, and was Editor of the research section of the Australian Family Physician, Chair of the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP) National Research Committee, and President of the Australian Association for Academic General Practice. He chairs the editorial committee of the Australian Government's health web portal, HealthInsite. He was appointed visiting professor of general practice at Oxford University in 2007.

Ruth O'Halloran

Ruth is from Galway in Ireland and has been living and working in Australia for the past 6 years. Ruth studied at the National University of Galway Ireland (NUI-G) where she her honours degree, followed by a PhD, both in Biochemistry. In Australia, Ruth did a post-doc at the Heart Research Institute, in Sydney, before moving into the pharmaceutical industry and medical writing. Ruth worked as a medical writer at Eli Lilly for a number of years before joining Pfizer in January 2004. Ruth currently heads up the Clinical Programming and Writing group in the Asia Biometrics Centre at Pfizer, supporting all clinical trial-related programming and medical writing activities across all therapeutic areas for the Australia/Asia region.

Seducing gatekeepers: getting more science past your editor

Lumina Room

Deborah Smith

Garry Linnell

Garry Linnell was appointed Director of News and Current Affairs with Nine Network Australia in 2006.

He began his career in journalism as a cadet with The Age in Melbourne in 1982. As a sportswriter for several years, he covered two Olympic Games, a Commonwealth Games and a cricket tour of India. He served two stints as sports editor of The Age before becoming features editor of The Sunday Age and eventually its Deputy Editor (1995-98), where he won the Walkley Award for feature writing in 1998.

A former Melbourne-based reporter with The Bulletin (1999-2000), he returned to the magazine as its Editor-in-Chief in 2002. In between he served a two-year stint as a feature writer with the Sydney Morning Herald's Good Weekend magazine.

As Editor-in-Chief, he recast The Bulletin as a news and current affairs magazine that set the agenda when it came to Australian national affairs. Reknown for its ability to attract the nation's best feature writers and investigative journalists, the magazine regularly broke stories that were followed up by the rest of Australia's major media outlets.

Garry is the author of three books - Football Ltd: The Inside Story of the AFL; Playing God: The Rise and Fall of Gary Ablett and Raelene: The Raelene Boyle story.

Peter Fray

Peter Fray has been a journalist for more than 20 years. He has worked for The Sunday Age, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun-Herald, and The Bulletin. After a period with The Sydney Morning Herald and the now-defunct Australian Rural Times, he joined The Sunday Age in 1991 and became news editor and national correspondent.

After two years as The Bulletin's political correspondent in Canberra, he re-joined The Sydney Morning Herald where he held a number of roles including religious editor, news editor, and deputy editor. In 2001 Fray was appointed Europe correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, based in London. In February 2005, Fray was appointed deputy editor of The Sun-Herald, and in December, 2005 he was appointed editor of The Sunday Age.

Introduction to science editing - Part 1 (a workshop presented by the Society of Editors)

Connaught Room

Eve Merton

Eve Merton BSc (Hons, Genetics), MA (Communication): I have a background in the biosciences and a masters in communication studies. My work experience ranges from laboratory and fieldwork, data manipulation for non-government organisations and science journal publishing, to report writing for the British Association for the Advancement of Science. I am currently (2007) writing a PhD investigating how Irish biotechnology researchers communicate about their work. After working with Biotext - a science communication consultancy specialising in research, writing and editing in the sciences - as a subcontractor, I joined the company in 2006. I manage the Melbourne office, which opened in January 2007.

Meg Heaslop

Meg Heaslop BSocSci (Hons, Archaeology), BSc, Grad Dip (Sci Comm), Grad Cert (Mol Biol) I have a background in biomedical science and palaeopathology, as well as a graduate diploma in science communication (The University of Queensland), and experience as a science writer and editor (for the Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University, New Zealand. Since 2005, I've worked for Biotext - a science communication consultancy based in Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne, specialising in research, writing and editing in the biological sciences. After seven months in the Canberra office, I moved back to Brisbane to open a Biotext office in West End, sharing office space with Econnect Communication.

Janet Salisbury

Janet Salisbury obtained a PhD at the Paterson Laboratories, a cancer research institute in Manchester, UK. She continued her research for a further 10 years in London, Melbourne and Canberra before the pressures of family life prompted a change. Over the past 16 years she has built up her own company, Biotext - a Canberra-based science information consultancy that currently employs nine people. Biotext supports government and academic agencies through literature research, writing and editing of science information for practitioners, policy makers and the general public. In recent years her work has covered topics such as evidence-based medicine, infectious diseases (human and animal), use of antibiotics, GMOs, cloning and embryo research, air and water quality, and sustainable development.

4.00 to 5.30 pm

Water wars

Savoy 1

Tim Flannery

An internationally acclaimed scientist, explorer and conservationist, Tim has published more than 90 scientific papers and written many books including definitive ecological histories of Australia (The Future Eaters) and North America (The Eternal Frontier) and the landmark essay Beautiful Lies: Population and Environment in Australia. His most recent work, The Weather Makers (first published in Australia, October 2005) - concerns the global implications of climate change and its special relevance for Australia.

He is chairman of the SA Sustainability Roundtable and Premier's Science Council; a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy; and the National Geographic Society's representative in Australasia. His pioneering research as a field biologist in New Guinea prompted Sir David Attenborough to describe him as being in the league of the world's great explorers and the travel writer Redmond O'Hanlon to remark, "He's discovered more new species than Charles Darwin."

Formerly the Director of the South Australian Museum, Tim is now a Professor at Macquarie University, where he has built a research unit within the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences focusing on biodiversity, evolution and climate change.

He is also an adviser and ambassador on climate change to the Premier of South Australia Mike Rann.

Åsa Wahlquist

Åsa Wahlquist has been a rural journalist for over 20 years. She has a degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Adelaide. She has worked as a winemaker at her family's vineyard, Botobolar at Mudgee in central west NSW. Åsa began her career as a rural journalist at the ABC, where she worked on The Country Hour on ABC radio, and Countrywide on ABC TV. She has been with The Australian since 1997. Åsa has won a number of awards, including a Walkley Award in 1996, The Australian Government Peter Hunt Eureka Prize for Environmental Journalism in 2005 and The European Community Journalist Award in 1993.

Mike Young

Mike is Professor of Water Economics and Management at Adelaide University and holds Adjunct Professorships with the Centre for Ecological Economics and Water Policy Research at the University of New England; and Faculty of Science and Agriculture at Charles Sturt University. A Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Mike Young established CSIRO's Policy and Economic Research Unit with offices in Adelaide,

Mike Rann

Mike Rann is Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts and Minister for Volunteers.

He was first elected to Parliament in 1985 as the Member for Briggs, and in December 1989 was elected to Cabinet, as Minister for Employment and Further Education, Minister of Youth Affairs, Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Minister assisting in Ethnic Affairs.

In September 1992 he became Minister for Business and Regional Development, Minister of Tourism and Minister of State Services. After Labor lost government in December 1993, he was elected Deputy Leader of the Opposition, and in September 1994 was elected unopposed as the Leader of the Opposition.

Mike has two children and is actively involved in soccer and the arts.

Using science to influence decision makers for action (a workshop presented by the ASC)

Savoy 2

Toss Gascoigne

Toss Gascoigne is Executive Director of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) since 2004. CHASS represents people in the humanities, arts and social sciences, many working in research and education positions in universities.

From 1995, he was Director of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, where he developed and organised "Science meets Parliament". This brings 250 scientists to Canberra to meet with members of Parliament.

He runs training workshops (in conjunction with Jenni Metcalfe) for scientists, to improve their skills in dealing with the media and their public speaking. He is the inaugural President of the PCST Network, an international group which runs conferences on science communication; and a founding member and former President of Australian Science Communicators.

Toss has written articles and book chapters on science communication, and co-authored studies on the attitude of scientists to the media, and the way journalists regard scientists.

Michael Hartmann

Mr Michael Hartmann is the Chief Executive Officer of the Cooperative Research Centres Association. The CRCA represents around 60 Cooperative Research Centres throughout Australia. Michael s role includes facilitating advocacy to Federal parliament ensuring that the CRC Programme holds its position as a leading initiative in the Australian Government s R&D portfolio.

Fiona Poletti

Over the past 15 years, Fiona Poletti has worked extensively in the area of government relations. This includes 8 years experience with former Federal Cabinet Minister, Senator the Hon. Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts as a Senior Broadcasting, Media and Arts Advisor; 2 years as Strategic Advisor - Government Relations for the federal government's primary arts funding and advisory agency, the Australia Council for the Arts and several years of public affairs and project management contracts with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and other government agencies in Japan. Fiona is currently working as Strategic Advisor to the Australia Business Arts Foundation, a company of the Federal Government designed to promote private sector support for the arts.

Kathy Williams

Kathy is the Deputy chair for the Collections Council of Australia. Ms Williams was awarded a Centenary Medal for services to the Transport and Logistics Sector. She is currently General Manager of Bunker Freight Lines and is a former Chair of the Australian Trucking Association. She has held public interest positions with Resthaven, a large aged care facility, and with the Synod of the Uniting Church. In 2000 Ms Williams was a founding member and subsequent Chair of Adelaide Rotaract Club.

Life and death in 2020: how will science respond? (Part 2)

Savoy 3

Richard Head

Prof. Richard Head, Director of the Preventative Health National Research Flagship, is a pharmacologist and is also Affiliate Professor in the Department of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology at the University of Adelaide.

Formerly he was Chief of CSIRO's Division of Health Sciences and Nutrition and, prior to that, Chief of CSIRO's Division of Human Nutrition.

He served as Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology at West Virginia University Medical Centre, where he led a NIH-funded research group. He has also served as a Research Fellow with the Department of Medicine at the University of Melbourne and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology.

Professor Head is a Member of numerous professional organisations and has extensive experience in research and research management. His current research includes approaches to understanding the protective action of dietary constituents in human health.

Prof. Richard Head has authored and co-authored over 120 peer-reviewed papers.

Roger Short

Professor Roger V. Short A.M. Sc.D. F.A.A. F.R.S. An Anglo-Scottish-Australian, Roger initially trained as a Veterinarian at the University of Bristol, did a Masters in Genetics at the University of Wisconsin, and a PhD at the University of Cambridge in Reproductive Endocrinology. From 1972 to 1982 he directed the Medical Research Council Unit of Reproductive Biology in Edinburgh.

In 1982 he moved to Monash University in Melbourne, where he continued his interest in Human Reproduction, and became involved in HIV/AIDS prevention. In 1989 he was a Consultant to the WHO Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva. In 1996 he moved to the University of Melbourne, where he is actively involved in teaching and research. One of his current research interests is the impact of continuing human population growth on the natural environment and Global Warming.

Christina Scott

Christina Scott's introduction to journalism was a baptism by fire when the whites-only South African government instituted martial law and low-level civil war broke out. Democracy was rather dull in comparison, so she took to persecuting harmless scientists by putting them on tv and radio at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, considered one of the world's biggest public broadcasters, in Johannesburg. She was commissioned to write a biography of Nelson Mandela shortly after moving to Cape Town, writes for SciDev.Net, mentors reporters in Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria through the WFSJ, has a strange accent which is heard frequently on radio and continues to frighten scientists by providing analysis, assessment (and even encouragement!) of their media outreach.

Controversies in evidence-based medicine (a workshop presented by the Australasian Medical Writers' Association)

Savoy 3

Chris Del Mar

Speakers

Monday

9.00 am to 4.30 pm:

UNESCO journalism education and training

2.00 to 3.30 pm / 4.00 to 5.30 pm:

Editing workshop

3 pm: Registrations open

6 pm: Welcome reception

Tuesday

9.00 am to 10.15 am

Plenary - Biasing scientific information

Savoy 1

11.00 am to 12.30 pm

Investigating scientific fraud

Savoy 1

The reporting of nuclear power

Savoy 2

Uncovering the hobbit, Homo floresiensis

Savoy 3

New Media: podcasting, Second Life and the future of the web

Kensington Room

2.00 to 3.30 pm

A code of ethics for science journalists

Savoy 1

A peer review of peer review

Savoy 2

Wise Up - The truth about TV science

Savoy 3

Good for You: public health and public interest

Kensington Room

Developing communication strategies (a workshop offered by the ASC)

Connaught Room

4.00 to 5.30 pm

The role of scientific journals in breaking news

Savoy 1

Purifying a Poisoned Planet

Savoy 2

You are not your brain scan: critical reporting on the mind sciences

Kensington Room

Creating clear science messages (a workshop offered by the ASC)

Connaught Room

Wednesday

9.00 am to 10.15 am

Reporting with climate change

Savoy Ballroom

11.00 am to 12.30 pm

Poles apart but together in science for International Polar Year

Savoy 1

Wildfire: friend or foe? Lessons from a dry continent

Savoy 2

Climate change and the spread of disease

Savoy 3

Science versus business - a clash of cultures

Connaught Room

2.00 to 3.30 pm

Coal: fuel of the future

Savoy 1

Coral reefs: going, going, gone?

Savoy 2

Life and death in 2020: how will science respond? (Part 1)

Savoy 3

Evaluating clinical papers

Kensington Room

Seducing gatekeepers: getting more science past your editor

Lumina Room

Introduction to science editing - Part 1 (a workshop presented by the Society of Editors)

Connaught Room

4.00 to 5.30 pm

Water wars

Savoy 1

Using science to influence decision makers for action (a workshop presented by the ASC)

Savoy 2

Life and death in 2020: how will science respond? (Part 2)

Savoy 3

Controversies in evidence-based medicine (a workshop presented by the Australasian Medical Writers' Association)

Savoy 3