Do you think of astronomy as the study of far-away objects with no real meaning in your daily life?

Dr Michelle Thaller, will explain why that idea couldn’t be further from the truth. With new observations from our telescopes and planetary spacecraft, we are uncovering the story of ourselves. Find out how the universe is coursing through your veins, how it wound up in your DNA, and why your next breath is literally as vast as a galaxy.

We’re so proud to be welcoming Dr Michelle Thaller to Ōtepoti Dunedin to share her vast knowledge of space and the universe. Dr Michelle Thaller recently retired from NASA after 27 years, ending as the Assistant Director of Science at NASA’s largest base, Goddard Space Flight Center in Washington, DC. She has loved the stars since she could barely walk (according to her mother) but as a student, she felt pretty scared and lost in her science classes, until she discovered the curiosity, passion, kindness, and humour in her astronomy professors. She wanted to be around people like that.

While working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she became interested in how science was communicated to the public and decided to specialise in this for the rest of her career. Dr Thaller now has decades of experience sharing her own knowledge and that of others through science programmes such as The Universe on the History Channel, NatGeo’s The Known Universe, Nova’s The Secret Life of Scientists, several other BBC and PBS programmes, and the Big Think podcast.

Dr Thaller was recently awarded NASA's highest honour, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, for the contributions she has made to the agency. She has presented two TEDx talks and been a featured speaker at San Diego’s ComicCon, Hasbro Toy Company’s innovation workshops, and climate summits in the US and Europe. Under her leadership NASA has received awards for online science content and Dr Thaller is especially proud of NASA's social media programme. She is currently a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee and a part-time commercial fisherman working out of Petersburg, Alaska.