Tickets are still available, only $10!
In addition to our awesome panel of science ambassadors, we’ll have two other Nerd Nite talks.
Spacetime in “Star Trek”
Does going to warp around a sun send you back in time? And how does one get back? What exactly are chronitons, gravitons, or tachyons? How does the “Harry Kim Wormhole” work? We’ll explore all the times Star Trek has played around with space and time for better or worse.
Erin Macdonald received her PhD at 25 in gravitational astrophysics at the University of Glasgow in Scotland as a member of the LIGO Collaboration searching for gravitational waves. She left academia less than a year-and-a-half before their Nobel Prize-winning detection, but she promises she’s not bitter (giving talks in a bar helps!). After working as a researcher and educator, she became a technical advisor for the Department of Defense. In 2020 Erin ditched the engineering career to focus on her work as the official Star Trek science advisor. In addition, she now works full time as a writer, a voice actor, and produces independent LGBTQIA+ sci-fi short films with her company Spacetime Productions. She is a regular Nerd Nite speaker and contributed an essay “Artificial Gravity in Science Fiction” to the recent Nerd Nite book “How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi”.
Joint talk from Elizabeth Rega and Stuart Sumida: “Revenge of the Nerds: How Science (and Sex) Illuminate Character Design and Movement“
Elizabeth and Stuart will describe their backgrounds (anthropology, anatomy, and paleontology) and how important actual science is to the making of animated films believable (not necessarily accurate, but believable) visual effects, and effective video gaming.
A Professor of Anatomy and Vice Provost at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, CA, Dr. Elizabeth Rega has published numerous peer-reviewed and popular papers on pathology of ancient humans, dinosaurs and other extinct taxa and has conducted fieldwork on three different continents. Her specialization in teaching anatomy to medical students has led her to be a frequent consultant to the film, animation and game industry, she provides an anatomical and anthropological perspective to inform the development and animation of characters, as well as to highlight the problematic history of racial depictions in film, animation, and entertainment.
Stuart Sumida is a professor of biology at California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB, or as it is more affectionately known – CSU on the way to Vegas’). He is a paleontologist by research specialization, and the president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (close to the ultimate in nerd cred). He specializes in the study of the earliest animals that made it out onto land without having to back to the water to have sex. He is also a frequent anatomical and paleontological consultant to the entertainment industry, having worked on over seventy animated films, video games and theme park rides.
