This week we welcome two new Scientists to the Fireside Science team!

Mitch Ladyman (@DrLadyman) is an ecologist – he’s the Principal Biologist at Animal Plant Mineral, environmental consultants in Western Australia. He works with venomous snakes and likes to spread the word about their beauty and their place in the ecosystem.

Mitch blogs about reptiles, being a field biologist and many other interesting topics. He’s also a motorsports journalist and has a youtube channel.

Alina Fisher (@alinacfisher) is the Research Manager for Environmental Studies on the opposite side of the world  at the University of Victoria (in Victoria, British Columbia). So she gets to work with a diverse group of researchers – which keeps it interesting and challenging.

Alina’s background is in ecology – particularly population and community ecology. She will probably have something fascinating to tell us about mutualisms – plant-pollinator relationships, mycorrhizal associations, etc.

Alina is one of David Suzuki’s Queen of Green coaches  so she happily helps friends and family to find easy ways to green their lives. She’s also the mom of two young girls. She tries to make science accessible to their peer group: nature walks, chemistry experiments, natural history, etc. She’s a backyard chicken enthusiast too.

Some of our members including Alina have a passion for making Science come alive to the younger generation. So I thought it would be a good time to introduce “Bedtime Science”. The aim of Bedtime Science will be to bring science alive to children.