IN THESE STRANGE TIMES Science Gallery Dublin

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and changed society as we once knew it. Certain industries have experienced extensive closures while health services operated night and day to protect and save citizens - but this isn’t the first time the world has experienced a pandemic and it certainly won’t be the last. What tactics did we use to tackle the virus and how can we use our learnings to futureproof society against subsequent threats?

Orla Sheils has a Ph.D. in Molecular Pathology from Trinity College Dublin and a MA in Medical Law and Ethics from King's College London. She is a leader in multidisciplinary molecular pathology, who has championed a niche area facilitating interaction between basic science, translational research, clinical service provision and biotechnology. She has a particular interest in developing novel molecular diagnostics, and she works closely with industry bringing novel technologies and applications to the translational research setting. Her research strategy is to improve human health and wellbeing through translational research, and it is predicated on clinical, patient centred, laboratory-based and health service research informed by real-world clinical bedside problems and societal and global health challenges.

Noel McCarthy is the Professor of Population Health Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. His principal research focus is on infectious disease epidemiology with broader interests in applying research methods to public health problems. His teaching goal is to facilitate students to learn by thinking and reflective experience, whether that be specific and technical such as how to think as an epidemiologist or more general such as reflecting on how power structures in society affect the distribution of health and wellbeing.

Tara Stewart is a DJ, Podcast Host, Slow Fashion lover and Radio Presenter of the New Music Show on RTE 2FM. When she’s not gracing the national airwaves, Tara can be found DJ-ing at high profile gigs including top festivals like Electric Picnic, Longitude, Forbidden Fruit or supporting Cher in the 3 Arena, Dublin in 2019. 2020 saw her become the September cover star of Women’s magazine, Stellar Mag for a sustainable fashion special.

Food is essential to our daily every day and like every other area of society, it was greatly affected by the pandemic. When the hospitality industry closed many people were forced to familiarise themselves with their own kitchens, myths arose about quick antidotes to the virus from the consumption of bleach to plant-based diets and certain cohorts of COVID-19 cases lost their sense of taste and smell, impacting their relationships with food. How has the pandemic changed we way we produce and consume food?

Rachel Herz, Ph.D. is a neuroscientist and world-leading expert on the psychological science of smell. She has been conducting research on the senses, emotion, perception, motivated behavior, and cognition since 1990. Dr. Herz is a TEDx speaker, has published over 95 original research papers, received numerous awards and grants, co-authored scholarly handbooks, and is an adjunct professor in the Medical School of Brown University and part-time faculty in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Boston College.  She is also a professional consultant to various industries regarding scent, taste, food, and flavor, and is frequently called upon as an expert witness in legal cases involving olfaction.

Dr. Herz is the author of several academic and popular science books including The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell, which was selected as a finalist for the “2009 AAAS Prize for Excellence in Science Books,” and That’s Disgusting: Unraveling the Mysteries of Repulsion, which analyses the emotion of disgust from culture to neuroscience, and was listed as a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”.  Her latest book Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food explores how our senses, brain, and psychology govern our perception of food, and the experiences and consequences of eating and was listed among the Best Food Books of 2018 by The Smithsonian and The New Yorker.

Joshna Maharaj is a chef and activist who is interested in the state of our food system, and how everybody eats, from day to day, when they're not at restaurants. She hopes to inspire people to make better friends with food because she thinks that a richer, happier, more nourished life is possible with a deeper connection to food and the people who move it from field to kitchen to table.

Joshna Maharaj works with communities, organisations, and institutions to build value-based food services that prioritise good food, hospitality, and sustainability. She believes chefs can help people and communities transform with stronger connections to their food. Joshna uses social gastronomy to rebuild food systems, to increase people's access to good food, and to help everyone have more fun in the kitchen.

Joshna’s book Take Back the Tray is a movement to reconnect food with health, wellness, education, and rehabilitation in public institutions around the globe. And it's a story about a chef who took on the institution and tried to make change.

Tara Stewart is a DJ, podcast host, slow fashion lover, and presenter of the New Music Show on RTE 2FM. When she’s not gracing the national airwaves, Tara can be found DJing at high-profile gigs including top festivals and live events. 2020 saw her become the September cover star of Women’s magazine, Stellar Mag for a sustainable fashion special.

Never one to shy away from speaking her mind, Tara also hosts a slow fashion and sustainable theme podcast called Dirty Laundry, with Season 1 featuring guests like French Designer Roland Mouret and Irish Chef and Author Rozanna Purcell.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it felt like everyone was an immunologist as personal views arose in response to the spread of the virus. Some people assumed a new vaccine would swoop in and save us from the threat of COVID-19, while others questioned the efficacy of mask-wearing and the health effects of a new type of vaccine. How can we separate truth from fake news? What impact does misinformation have on our decision-making processes? Is it possible for our brains to form false memories in our own minds?

GUESTS

Stephen Murphy is an Assistant Professor in Marketing. His teaching is in consumer behaviour, brand management, and marketing theory. His research extends socio-cultural approaches to examine various aspects of consumer culture. Current research interests include conspiracy theories, creativity, and online gambling.

His research is interested in thinking about how capitalism shapes and organises daily life, particularly in terms of embodiment, identity, and experience. He has published research on these themes in Marketing Theory, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, Association of Consumer Research, and Industrial Marketing Management. Stephen’s research has also featured in outlets such as The Irish Times, The BBC, The Sunday Business Post, The Conversation, and Snopes.

Stephen is a member of the Consumer Culture Theory Consortium, Academy of Marketing, and a Fellow of the Higher Education Authority. His research has received numerous awards at leading international conferences.

Ciara Greene is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology, UCD where she also heads up the Attention and Memory Laboratory. She graduated from Trinity College Dublin in 2005 with a BA (Hons.) in Psychology and then completed a Ph.D. in Neuroscience in Trinity College Dublin in 2008. She gained postdoctoral experience at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, and at Imperial College London before taking up a lecturing post at University College Cork in 2012. She moved to UCD in 2014.

Her research interests include the cognitive processes of attention and working memory, and the manner in which they interact. I am particularly interested in the practical applications of these processes to real-world problems. Ongoing research in the A&M lab focuses on topics such as false memory and susceptibility to 'fake news', the influence of the emotional state on memory, and cognitive training programs.

Tara Stewart is a DJ, Podcast Host, Slow Fashion lover, and Radio Presenter of the New Music Show on RTE 2FM. When she’s not gracing the national airwaves, Tara can be found DJ-ing at high profile gigs including top festivals like Electric Picnic, Longitude, Forbidden Fruit or supporting Cher in the 3 Arena, Dublin in 2019. 2020 saw her become the September cover star of Women’s magazine, Stellar Mag for a sustainable fashion special.

Never one to shy away from speaking her mind, Tara also hosts a slow fashion and sustainable theme podcast called Dirty Laundry, with Season 1 featuring guests like French Designer Roland Mouret and Irish Chef and Author Rozanna Purcell. Having just released Season 2 with guests like Irish designer Richard Malone and Former Digital Editor at Vogue Anne-Marie Tomchak, the podcast has garnered a loyal following of people wanting to make changes to their lifestyle for the better.

The pandemic has unearthed inequalities in our homes and our lifestyles and while some have flaunted the luxuries of leafy green gardens and the seaside on their doorstep, others have been confined to the limitations of their interior living quarters. The pandemic has reinforced the importance of connecting with the outdoors and being immersed in nature but what are the precise physiological and mental benefits and how can we achieve them within the limits of lockdown?

Aoife Kirk is a doctor, currently based in Dublin, Ireland. She was introduced to the concept of Planetary Health during a Masters in Public Health at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in 2018, and worked as Senior Medical Officer in Public Health with the HSE team during the first lockdown, before returning to clinical medicine. She is one of the co-founders of Irish Doctors for Environment, an organisation re-launched in 2018 that aims to educate, advocate and collaborate on environmental health issues and the co-benefits of climate action to create healthier places for wellbeing and public benefit. IDE is a group of voluntary doctors across all medical and surgical disciplines who collaborate on environmental health promotion, public consultations, medical education, sustainability within healthcare, and most recently launched a podcast interviewing other sectors on climate action.


Ben Channon is an architect, author, TEDx speaker, and mental wellbeing advocate, and is well known in the industry as a thought leader in designing for happiness and wellbeing. He is a Director at wellbeing design consultancy Ekkist, where he helps clients and design teams to create healthier places, and researches how buildings and urban design can impact how we feel.

He developed an interest in design for mental health, wellbeing, and happiness after suffering from anxiety problems in his mid-twenties. This led him to research the relationship between buildings and happiness, which formed the basis of his first book: Happy by Design. Ben now speaks on this subject to businesses and universities around the world. Ben then went on to qualify as a WELL accredited professional, broadening his knowledge to encompass design for physical wellbeing. In January 2020 he was invited to join the WELL Mind Advisory panel, using his expertise to raise the bar for healthy buildings worldwide.

Fatigued, languished, exhausted, burnt out, depleted - we are all becoming a little too familiar with these terms but what exactly can we do about it and why is it happening? The term burnout may have been coined in 1974 but manifestations of stress and exhaustion appear to have exacerbated since we transitioned to life online. Tara Stewart will dig into the roots of burnout with cognitive psychologist, Celine Fox, and mindfulness and meditation expert, Conor Creighton.

GUESTS

Conor Creighton is an author, journalist, coach, and meditation teacher, Conor has been travelling the globe as a reporter, a motivational speaker and a meditation teacher for almost twenty years. He is the author of two books and has been published in the Guardian, the Irish Times, and Vice Magazine. He has won the Irish Travel Journalist of the Year Award, the Gwaertler Foundation Award, and the Simon Cumbers Media Fund on three occasions.

He came to meditation in 2012 and quickly became immersed in the study of mindfulness meditation and vipassana meditation. He trained in India with the Dalai Lama, and at the Redwood Institute in San Francisco. He has sat several long retreats and studied a number of meditation types. Conor's teaching is a cross-pollination of ancient techniques and contemporary wisdom. Conor is a down-to-earth teacher, and a natural storyteller, a skill he learned in part from his many years as a writer, but also as a bartender. He is based in Berlin and Dublin.

Celine Fox completed her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Trinity College Dublin in 2018. She then went on to complete a master’s degree in Clinical Neuropsychiatry at King’s College London in 2019. Celine is currently doing a Ph.D. in Psychology at the Gillan Lab, Trinity College Dublin. As part of her Ph.D. research, which is funded by the Irish Research Council, she is working with longitudinal clinical and cognitive data, collected regularly and remotely. 

Celine's ultimate goal is to develop clinical tools that can predict the future course of mental health problems on an individualised basis. These clinical tools are being developed and delivered via a smartphone app called Neureka. At Neureka, users can play games, learn facts about brain health and track their own moods or behaviours over time. The information collected through Neureka will fuel novel research on how we understand, predict and treat mental health conditions and dementia. Neureka is free to download now from the App Store or Google Play Store. 

MODERATOR

Tara Stewart is a DJ, Podcast Host, Slow Fashion lover and Radio Presenter of the New Music Show on RTE 2FM. When she’s not gracing the national airwaves, Tara can be found DJing at high-profile gigs including top festivals like Electric Picnic, Longitude, Forbidden Fruit or supporting Cher in the 3 Arena, Dublin in 2019. 2020 saw her become the September cover star of Women’s magazine, Stellar Mag for a sustainable fashion special.

Growing up in Australia's outback, Alice Springs, she was born to Irish/ Malaysian /Indian parents. In 2011 Tara decided to move to Europe and the UK to further her career and has become a force to be reckoned with on the creative scene DJing for the likes of Magnum, Diet Coke, Moet Chandon, Veuve Clicquot, Bumble, Disney, Zalando to name a few. Her arresting personality and unique sense of style has built her a loyal online following of over 20,000 people and has afforded her the opportunity to collaborate with global brands such as Always, Sprite, Coke, Schuh, Puma, Disney, Carlsberg, Smirnoff, Bacardi, and more.

COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out across the world with priority being placed on healthcare workers and our most vulnerable citizens but while some countries are hoarding vaccines others are suffering while cases escalate beyond control. Tara Stewart chats to Anuradha Gupta, Deputy CEO of Gavi Vaccine Alliance, and Eamonn Faller, Doctor and infectious disease specialist, about how the developed world can step up to ensure low and middle-income countries are protected from the virus and the long-term benefits of vaccine equity. Listen up for Lucas Garvey's dystopian speculation with the FUTURECAST.

Anuradha Gupta is Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Since joining Gavi in 2015, Anuradha has led efforts to put equity and gender at the centre of Gavi’s programmatic planning and to tailor support to countries within Gavi’s strategy. She has also driven efforts to create a new model of country-level Alliance support, through the establishment of the partners’ engagement framework (PEF). At the same time, Anuradha has helped to improve country ownership and leadership of Gavi-supported programmes while enhancing accountability for results. In 2019, Gavi received the prestigious Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for providing sustained access to childhood vaccines in the world’s poorest countries, saving millions of lives and highlighting the power of immunisation to prevent diseases.

Prior to Gavi, Anuradha served as Mission Director of the National Health Mission of India, where she ran the largest – and possibly most complex – public health programme in the world with an annual budget of US$ 3.5 billion. A passionate and influential advocate of women, young girls and children, Anuradha played a leading role in India’s efforts to eradicate polio transmission, reduce maternal and child mortality and revitalise primary health care.

Anuradha has contributed towards a number of important global health initiatives. She served as a member of the Steering Committee for Child Survival Call to Action, co-chaired the Stakeholder Group for the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning and was a member of the Family Planning 2020 (FP2020) Reference Group. Anuradha served as Co-Chair of the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH) and is currently a member of the PMNCH Board. She also played a role in shaping the Global Financing Facility (GFF) and is a member of the GFF Investors Group. From 2015-2018, Anuradha served on the Merck for Mothers Advisory Board.

Eamonn Faller is a doctor and infectious disease specialist currently based in Cork University Hospital, after originally graduating from Medicine at Trinity College Dublin in 2012. Eamonn has been heavily involved in the medical response to COVID-19 by treating patients on the frontline since March 2020. He is a first-named author on four peer-reviewed papers accepted for publication in the area of COVID-19 and is involved in a number of other areas of research.

Eamonn completed a Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Liverpool in 2016 and subsequently worked with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on a HIV project in Nyanza Province in Kenya, in 2017, where he also participated in MSF's response to post-election unrest. He is currently completing an MSc in Health Economics, Policy and Management in the London School of Economics. He has contributed several articles, made media appearances and attended a Dail Committee in various patient advocacy areas including HIV, the National Children’s Hospital and Direct Provision in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.