MacDiarmid Institute Regional Lecture Series 'Materials: Fact or Fiction' - Wanaka

Baakonite – a composite metal alloy from Star Trek, used by the Klingons in their bat'leths and mek'leths, as well as in their communicators. Vibranium from Marvel Comics is a rare metallic ore with energy-manipulating properties. If tempered properly through a mix of magic and science, Vibranium can amplify mystical energies From what we know of the periodic table and the world around us, could these materials exist in real life?

Associate Professor Duncan McGillivray, a MacDiarmid Institute Principal Investigator at the University of Auckland, will give his take on Baakonite as featured in Star Trek. And Dr Krista Steenbergen, MacDiarmid Institute Associate Investigator and Physics Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW), will talk about Vibranium, the fictional metal appearing in the Marvel Comics. Duncan and Krista will be joined by Otago Museum science communicator Dr Claire Concannon as MC.

There’ll be two talks, a three-minute animated video on the ‘science of lightsabers’, and time for Q&A. Due to recent uncertainty around COVID alert levels, the MacDiarmid Institute researchers and Claire will be contributing digitally to this event, but the public is invited to attend the event in person as normal and will still have the opportunity to ask questions of our speakers.

There will be other events around the country as part of the lecture series, including in Nelson and Tauranga, so please email MacD-Admin@ed.ac.uk if you would like to be informed of future events.

About the speakers

Associate Professor Duncan McGillivray is a Principal Investigator with the MacDiarmid Institute and an Associate Professor in Chemistry at the University of Auckland. Duncan trained in neutron and X-ray scattering in the UK, USA and Australia before establishing his research group in New Zealand. His PhD was at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, and he then worked in the USA at Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon Universities, and the NIST Center for Neutron Research, and in Australia at the Australian National University. Duncan’s current research is focused on material science, including colloids and surface science. 

Dr Krista Steenbergen is an Associate Investigator with the MacDiarmid Institute and a Physics Lecturer in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). She completed her PhD at VUW under the supervision of MacDiarmid Co-Director Associate Prof Nicola Gaston. Krista's research focuses on materials modelling:  using and developing computational methods to characterise material properties.  She is particularly interested in how material properties change - often in intriguing and counter-intuitive ways - at the nanoscale.  Her long term research is focused on discovery and characterisation of materials with application to renewable energy, battery and sensing technologies.