Tom Saunders

My first teaching resource & recent media

Tom — Tue, 30 Apr 2019 21:22:34 +0000

I’m very excited to share my first teaching resource: An article on insect antennae hosted by the Science Learning Hub. I’ve added the link to a new Outreach page on my site. I’m planning to write more articles for the Science Learning Hub focusing on insect biology, and in particular, New Zealand’s native wasps! Curious...

Lets #OpenScience: Part III

Tom — Tue, 05 Jun 2018 20:30:56 +0000

The first two posts in this series covered the core open science principles and touched on the importance of communicating your work. To wrap up this series I spoke to Dr Jon Tennant. Jon is a palaeontologist, independent researcher, and passionate advocate for open scholarship. Jon completed his PhD thesis in January 2017 at Imperial...

Lets #OpenScience: Part II

Tom — Tue, 29 May 2018 20:30:21 +0000

One of the reasons I write a blog is to communicate the science I do, and to share what other people are doing. Following open science principles is the first step in opening up science. We need to remember to get the word out about what we do! Science Communication When scientists communicate their science,...

Lets #OpenScience: Part I

Tom — Tue, 22 May 2018 21:10:31 +0000

Why do we do science? I’m a scientist-in-training who enjoys learning about the intersection of science and society, so this is a very important question for me. In attempting to answer this question for myself, I’ve become more and more interested in the concept of Open Science (OS): Open science is the movement to make...

Better Biosecurity Conference 2018

Tom — Wed, 09 May 2018 23:32:50 +0000

I was in Wellington on Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th May for the 2018 Better Border Biosecurity (B3) Conference. Everything ready for #B32018 plant border #biosecurity conference at Te Papa NZ tomorrow May 7 with 150 attendees and presentations from @MPI_NZ @PBCRC @BioHeritage_NZ @BioprotectionNZ @CEBRA_UoM @TiraWhakamataki @docgovtnz @SITplusPD @drjoluck @CSIROnews and more — B3 Director...

Radio Interview: NZ’s Weird Native Wasps

Tom — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 04:03:01 +0000

“What? Native wasps?” I hear you say. Yes, thousands of them! And they don’t sting! I was interviewed on Radio New Zealand’s ‘Our Changing World Programme’ by Alison Ballance. We chatted about our misunderstood parasitoid wasps, my masters research, and the value of taxonomy. You can check out the interview here. Happy listening!