Speakers

Dr. Verónica Rodriguez Moncalvo is an Assistant Professor (Teaching stream) in the School of Interdisciplinary Science. She has taught several undergraduate courses in the life sciences program including Research Methods, Cell Dynamics in Health and Disease and Human Nutritional Toxicology. Currently, she is also the program advisor for the Sensory Motor Systems (SMS) and Origins of Disease (OOD) specialization programs. Besides teaching, Dr. Rodriguez Moncalvo is actively involved in different research topics. Within the area of pedagogical research, Dr. Verónica Rodriguez Moncalvo is interested in studying 1) the impact and effectiveness of scaffolding visual literacy throughout the life science program and 2) the impact and effectiveness of group work on student success.

Dr Alexander Hall is a historian of science and science communication expert whose research explores the representation of science in popular media. With a keen interest in the role of science in society, he is dedicated to fostering active participation and engagement with science among diverse communities. As the leader of the Science in Society Lab at McMaster University, he conducts mixed-methods research that empirically examines how pressing scientific issues impact, interact with, and are perceived by various communities across Canada and beyond. 

Dr. Fiona McNeill is a Scottish-born medical physicist in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University. She gained a B.Sc. In physics from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Birmingham in England. She has spent her career building biomedical devices to study toxic metals in people, and has studied lead poisoning for over thirty years, with a particular focus on women's health. She and her students have shown that men and women metabolise lead differently, and that women who are exposed to lead experience early menopause. In recent years, she turned to the study of historical cosmetics and now studies whether women could have been poisoned by absorbing lead through their skin. 

Dr. J. R. Stone, or Doc Roc, is a Professor and SHARCNet Chair in Computational Biology in the Department of Biology and Director for the Origins Institute at McMaster University. Doc Roc’s research involves the fields astrobiology, bioinformatics, development, evolution, ecology, genetics, and physiology; computational studies on the genetic code and menopause; as well as organism groups representing each among the three major branches in the animal tree of life – snails, sea urchins, and tardigrades. 

Dr. Lauren Fink is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour and part of the Executive team at the McMaster Institute for Music & the Mind / LIVELab. She is also affiliated with the School of Computational Science and Engineering, the Neuroscience Graduate Program, and the Centre for Advanced Research in Experimental and Applied Linguistics (ARiEAL). Lauren's research reflects the intersection of these affiliations, often combining computational and cognitive neuroscientific methods to answer fundamental questions about human social behaviour in contexts such as music concerts, film screenings, and museum exhibitions.  

Dr. Michael Wong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences and an Instructor in the Honours Health Sciences Program at McMaster University. Michael is a proponent of student-centred pedagogies and works to de-centre traditional hierarchies in education. He focuses his scholarship on technology-enhanced learning, gamification, and student belonging. He has taught at several institutions of higher education in Canada and the United States and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE).