Before the famous Manhattan Project on the atomic bomb, a British project nicknamed Tube Alloys was started at Cambridge University, moving to Montreal in 1942. Gilles Sabourin’s award winning book, Montreal and the Bomb, tells this surprising story of famous physicists, forgotten women scientists, spies and more. He will also present new findings on a subgroup of the Montreal Laboratory located at McMaster University.

Retired nuclear engineer Gilles Sabourin worked for 30+ years on the safety of CANDU nuclear power plants, including 25 years for Atomic Energy of Canada. He is a member of the ACS (Association des communicateurs scientifiques du Québec) and juries the Hubert-Reeves Prize for Communication in Science.

Batteries enable the social media world, polarize our vehicle choices, and offer the elusive promise of storage for intermittent renewable energy (solar and wind). Is electrification a climate change solution or a red herring? Will we run out of lithium? Dr. Goward will guide us in examining these very important questions.

Dr. Gillian Goward chairs the Department of Chemistry & Chemical Biology at McMaster and holds the Faculty of Science Research Chair in Magnetic Resonance in Materials for Energy Storage. Her research focuses on lithium-ion batteries, fuel cell and other alternative energy devices. In 2023 she received the prestigious Gerhard Herzberg Award for outstanding achievement in the science of spectroscopy.

Dive into the thrilling tale of the expedition to find Sir Ernest Shackleton’s last ship, the Quest, on which in January, 1922, the famous polar explorer died, thus ending the Heroic Age of Exploration. CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society since 2013, John Geiger directed the RCGS’ role in the search for Franklin’s last ship, the Erebus, in 2014. In 2024 he led the RCGS team that found the Quest, which sank off the coast of Labrador on May 5, 1962.

Bestselling author of seven books, John Geiger CM is a recipient of the Order of Canada, among many other honours. In 2015 he co-conceived the Indigenous Peoples’ Atlas of Canada (Ottawa, RCGS et al, 2018, 4 vols.) and was subsequently instrumental in securing funding for the project from the Government of Canada.

Dr. Zeinab Hosseinidoust leads a team of bioengineers in training at McMaster University. She has a patent portfolio on bacteriophage bioengineering built around impactful scientific publications that challenge the status quo. Her team’s mission is to create innovative technologies that enable integration of bacteriophages (aka phages, viruses that exclusively target bacteria) as antimicrobials in health care and beyond. In her talk, she will provide an overview of the history and status of phage therapy and outline the outstanding challenges. She will present the technologies her team has developed to make phage antimicrobials more scalable, stable, and accessible.

Zeinab Hosseinidoust, PhD, Peng, is Canada Research Chair in Bacteriophage Bioengineering, and Associate Professor in McMaster’s Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Biomedical Engineering, The Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research, the Brockhouse Institute for Materials Research, and the Michael G DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. Visit our speaker's lab via this link: www.hosseinidoustlab.com/

What happens when an invasive fish species establishes itself in a highly human-modified aquatic environment? The Round Goby is a small, bottom-dwelling fish that has had big impacts on Hamilton Harbour and the Great Lakes. Dr. Balshine and her research team explore the effect of this species on Hamilton Harbour's ecosystem and how to manage it.

Dr. Sigal Balshine, a professor in McMaster’s Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, is also an affiliated faculty member of the Department of Biology. Her research centres on evolutionary behavioural ecology with a special focus on sociality, breeding system evolution and anthropogenic impacts on behaviour.

Two colleagues and friends share their experience of trying to live by the treaty principles of the Two Row Wampum (1610s) and the Silver Covenant Chain (1660s) to navigate the river of life more effectively, increasing the viability of relationships between different worlds. In light of climate change, ancestral knowledge from the European ship and the Indigenous canoe must be more thoughtfully engaged. This presentation is our lifeline to each other as individuals and as communities.

Dr. Daniel Coleman (Scots-Irish/Danish Canadian), is a teacher and writer, recently retired from McMaster’s Department of English & Cultural Studies. Rick Hill O.C. (Tuscarora, Six Nations), is an artist and historian, recently retired as Mohawk College’s Specialist in Indigenous Innovation.

From Indigenous pointing trees through European revivals to sleek modern, our structures reflect what is happening in our culture. Shannon Kyles will explore Ontario’s ever-changing public taste in architecture and what has inspired it. She recently released her first book, The Story of Ontario Architecture: What We Built and Why We Built It.

CBC Radio’s architectural columnist for many years, Shannon Kyles has taught Ontario architecture at Mohawk College for 30 years, maintains a website, ontarioarchitecture.com, and has restored both a Regency cottage and a Georgian carriage house.

Teaching art is work with a long history. What is the nature of this work today and what are the conditions in which it unfolds? Drawing on a lifetime as a student and teacher of art, Bates will explore what it means to share knowledge with others of both a craft and an expressive form.

Rae Bates is the founder of Hamilton Studio School, an independent art school providing visual arts learning for adults, youth and children. The third generation in her family to work in the visual arts, she has 25 years of experience painting, illustrating, writing, researching and teaching in Hamilton.