Kylie Ahern, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher, The Brilliant
Kylie Ahern is a an award-winning science publisher who has worked across popular and academic science publishing as well as mainstream media in Australia and the UK.
In 2004, she raised financing, established and was co-founder and CEO of Cosmos Media, launching Australia’s top-selling science magazine and website, COSMOS and environmental magazine and portal, The Green Lifestyle Magazine.
COSMOS was a game-changer for the science sector in Australia. Prior to the launch 99% of science magazine sales were to imported titles.
“COSMOS came along and had world class science writing around local scientists, many of who weren’t featured in mainstream media despite their extraordinary careers and impact. Before long we were outselling all the international titles. We created the science category in Australia. And we absolutely helped build the profile of many scientists that are well known today.”
Since selling Cosmos Media in 2013, Kylie has been consulting for various universities, research institutes and publishers. She helped establish the Nature Publishing Group team and their strategy for the Australian & New Zealand markets. More recently she founded strategy, content and engagement consultancy, STEM Matters.
Kylie is highly active in both the science and media community having served on the Science and Technology Australia Board, Publisher’s Australia board and as Chair of Inspiring Australia NSW Committee. Kylie currently serves on the board of CSIRO’s Data 61
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Gabrielle Ahern, Senior Editor
Gabrielle is a content creator and has experience editing television programs broadcast in Australia and overseas. She is also a marine biologist and science writer, with her stories featured in a variety of publications. Gabrielle has worked for Springer Nature as Managing Editor of a popular Nature Community website. She promotes conservation through social media, and likes to explore ways of producing stories through creative writing and visual techniques.
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Kate Arneman, Senior Editor
Kate Arneman has broad-ranging experience as a sub-editor and writer for Cosmos, Australian Geographic, Australia’s Science Channel and more. She believes that science communication can be a powerful driver of change and that getting the details right ensures the integrity of the message.
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Manuela Callari, Senior Editor
Manuela Callari is a science journalist and content creator. She has written for Australian and international publications, including MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Medical Republic and others. She is a regular contributor of news and features for Cosmos Magazine.
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Felicity Carter, Senior Editor
European-based Felicity Carter began her journalism career writing for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. For more than a decade she was Editor-in-Chief of Meininger’s Wine Business International magazine, and reported from 22 countries. As well as general feature writing, she has written about science and medicine for general interest magazines and worked as a medical editor. She believes we’re in a moment where good science communication is of critical importance.
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Kit Chapman, Senior Editor
Kit Chapman is an award-winning science writer currently travelling the world. He has written for Nature, New Scientist and the BBC, and has given science lectures for universities, schools and societies in four continents. His first book, Superheavy, was a finalist for the AAAS SB&F prize, and is currently working on his second book, Racing Green, about the science of motorsport.
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Gemma Conroy, Senior Editor
Gemma Conroy is a freelance science journalist based in Sydney, Australia. She has written stories for Scientific American, New Scientist, Smithsonian, Nature, Hakai Magazine, Audubon, Australian Geographic, ScienceAlert, Australian Popular Science, among other outlets. She has also worked as a staff reporter for ABC Science and Nature Index. Her work has been featured in The Best Australian Science Writing 2020 anthology.
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Ken Eastwood, Senior Editor
Ken Eastwood is a highly experienced, award-winning editor, journalist, author and communicator, with particular expertise in science, agriculture, sustainability and rural affairs. For the past six years he has been the Associate Editor of R.M.Williams OUTBACK magazine. His career has included more than a decade at Australian Geographic, including two years as the Editor, and wide experience editing and writing for medical, science and engineering publications, universities and government departments.
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Michelle Fincke, Senior Editor
Michelle Fincke is a Melbourne-based freelance journalist and editor. Since starting out at The Herald, she has worked for a range of newspapers and magazines, including as TV editor at The Sun, Melbourne editor of the Australian Women’s Weekly and deputy editor of The Australian Way for Qantas and editor of the custom titles Fernwood and House. She has covered a wide range of topics across many titles – everything from entertainment to fitness, cardiovascular disease to daily news. She has spent the last two years working with case studies and writing in the public health space
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Karen McGhee, Senior Editor
Karen McGhee is one of Australia’s most experienced science journalists and editors. She has written for dozens of local and international publications and websites including Scientific American, Nature and Australian Geographic.
Fiona McMillan-Webster
Fiona McMillan-Webster is an Australian science writer and author of The Age of Seeds: How Plants Hacked Time and Why Our Future Depends on It. Her stories have been published by National Geographic, Forbes, COSMOS, Australian Geographic and others. Her writing has also been included in multiple Best Australian Science Writing anthologies.
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Blair Palese, Senior Editor
Blair Palese is a world leader in climate and environmental communications. She is currently global climate editor for Climate & Capital Media. She co- founded 350.org Australia, was head of PR for The Body Shop and Communications Director for Greenpeace International and Greenpeace USA.
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Sarang Park, Science Writer
Sarang Park is currently a medical student at Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University. In 2019, she completed her Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Jacobs University Bremen, Germany. During that time, she joined Crastina, an international science communication network dedicated to disseminating skills and experience needed by students and scientists to engage with the public. There, her role is the current manager of the science communication rotating curator Twitter account, @IAmSciComm.
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Benjamin Plackett, Senior Editor
Benjamin Plackett is a freelance science journalist. He’s currently based in regional New South Wales, though he has spent close to a decade reporting from the Middle East – sometimes in recent post-conflict zones such as Iraq where he wrote about scientists rebuilding their labs after being liberated from ISIS. He particularly enjoys covering medical sciences and writing about research in countries where science doesn’t get the attention it deserves. His work has been published in Nature, Scientific American and Engadget amongst others. .
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Pratik Pawar, Senior Editor
Pratik Pawar is an independent science journalist who writes about global health, ecology, and science policy. His work has been published in Science News, The Atlantic, and Undark among other publications. He currently lives in Bangalore, India.
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Iain Scott, Senior Editor
Iain Scott has been a fixture of the life sciences sector for more than 20 years as a journalist, publisher and analyst, covering both research and business. He launched and edited Australian Biotechnology News for six years, before roles at Pharmawire and the Economist Intelligence Unit in London, and EY in Zürich.
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Bel Smith, Senior Editor
Belinda Smith is a science journalist based in Glasgow. Her work’s appeared on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC World Service, The Conversation and the Best Australian Science Writing 2016 and 2018.
Andy Tay
Andy Tay is the Presidential Young Professor at the National University of Singapore. He is named a Forbes 30 Under 30 (US/Canada, Science) and 2020 World Economic Forum Young Scientist. He hopes that through science outreach, he can inspire more students to consider a career in STEM.
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Pamela Whitby, Senior Editor
Pamela Whitby is an independent writer, researcher and editor who has covered everything from the travel industry to healthcare, parenting, mining, insurance and IT. She has worked for news, media and events organisations as well as the occasional corporate. Among them the BBC, the Economist Intelligence Unit, Telegraph Media, The Observer, Reuters Events and the EU-Africa Business Forum. She lives in London with a foot in Africa and in her free time is writing fiction.
OPINION WRITERS
Adrian Barnett
Adrian Barnett is a statistician and past president of the Statistical Society of Australia. He works in meta-research which uses research to improve how research is conducted and reported.
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Jas Chambers
Jas works at the intersection of science, governance, policy development and operational implementation. She loves working collaboratively and in complex stakeholder environments and has a reputation for building and leading high performing teams. She has had the good fortune to have a career that has spanned her passion for communicating to stakeholders about marine science and oceans, agriculture, ecosystem health and gender equity.
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Enrico Coiera
Professor Enrico Coiera, Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University. Trained in medicine and with a computer science PhD in Artificial Intelligence, Enrico has a research background in both industry and academia and a strong international research reputation for his work on decision support and communication processes in biomedicine.
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Ian Henderson
Professor Ian Henderson is the Director of Institute for Molecular Bioscience at University of Queensland and Group Leader of Bacterial infections and immunology. Professor Henderson and his group identify new methods to diagnose, prevent and treat infections before they become life- threatening.
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Darren Saunders
Darren is a Eureka Prize winning scientist and communicator. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Medical Sciences at the University of Sydney and Senior Research Advisor to Elizabeth Broderick and Co. Darren undertook post-doctoral training at the Garvan Institute and University of British Columbia and has held fellowships from the US Dept. of Defense and Cancer Institute NSW. He has made significant contributions to leadership, governance and engagement through peak professional bodies and policy development. He is a regular commentator on television and radio, and resident scientist on ABC TV’s The Drum and Channel 7’s Daily Edition. His written work covers everything from cancer, to science policy, masculinity and gender equity. When not in the lab, Darren loves being in the ocean or flying down a mountain.
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Susmita Mohanty
Dr. Susmita Mohanty is a spaceship designer, serial space entrepreneur and climate ambassador. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Future Council for Space Technologies.
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