Shaun is a scientist, he teaches in both the Department of Physics and the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Auckland. He was founding Director of Te Pūnaha Matatini, a national Centre of Research Excellence, and is a co-founder of the green fintech company, Toha. He has won a number of awards, including the Callaghan Medal, the Prime Minister’s Science Media Communication Prize, and the E. O. Tuck medal for applied mathematics. In 2020, his team was awarded the Prime Minister’s Science Prize for their COVID-19 response. He co-authored Get Off the Grass with the late Sir Paul Callaghan in 2012, and has since written two other books, Silencing Science and #NoFly.
Shaun is very good at describing complex science in lay persons language. He is well positioned to present the topic COVID-19 describing:
- What exactly is COVID-19?
- How does it act inside our bodies?
- Why are some variants spreading quicker than others?
- What does Dr Ashley Bloomfield mean when he says ‘we in NZ are just at the end of the beginning of COVID-19’?
- What does the World Health Organisation mean when they say ‘no-one will be safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe’?
- The science of the current vaccines available around the world – how do they work in the body, are some better than others, etc?
- Why has NZ chosen the vaccines it has?
- Why should I get vaccinated if it seems people are still getting the disease after they are vaccinated?
- AND much more including the range of questions the audience will have.