The seminars are held via Zoom and are open to all current Mensa members (NZ and international) and invited guests. 

For details of how to access the next seminar -

• Mensa NZ members - link
• members of other National Mensas - please download and complete this fillable form and return to seminars@mensa.org.nz

Seminar Date: 29th June 2025

Topic: Space Innovation at the Bottom of the World - The Growing NZ Space Industry

Description: Discover how Aotearoa New Zealand is carving out a bold position in the global space economy. From cutting-edge advancements in green propulsion, space power beaming, and solar-powered unmanned aircraft, to being ranked the fourth nation in the world in launching the most rockets into space, New Zealand's contributions are more than just ambitious—they're disruptive and globally relevant. This session will explore the country’s unique regulatory and cultural advantages, its progressive commercial approach, and how its geographic location creates both opportunities and challenges. Whether you're curious about industry growth, global collaborations, or future opportunities for education and innovation, this talk offers a comprehensive look into the exciting trajectory of New Zealand’s rapidly evolving space sector.

Speakers:

Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom, CEO SpaceBase
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom is the Co-Founder and CEO of SpaceBase, a social enterprise focused on ‘space for everyone’ starting with New Zealand. She also co-founded the Global Space Enablers Network. She is also a co-founder of International Space Consultants and is part of the lunar company Ceres Robotics team. Emeline has over 30 years of experience building New Space - through her work at Space Adventures, the first space tourism company sending private citizens to the International Space Station; to program development and teaching at International Space University. She was the Chief Impact Officer and Exec VP of Operations at Singularity University and is currently their Space Fellow. Emeline consults and mentors space start-ups around the world.

Eric Dahlstrom, CTO SpaceBase
Eric Dahlstrom is the Co-Founder and CTO of SpaceBase. He has over 40 years of experience as a systems engineer for public and private space companies in the US. Eric worked at 5 NASA centres – from the design of the International Space Station to risk assessment for the Space Shuttle programme and managing the development of commercial lunar landers. He is Faculty and Chair of the Space Science Department at the International Space University Space Studies Programme. He advises and mentors space start-up companies around the world.
Emeline and Eric are Edmund Hillary Fellows and in 2023 were named ‘World Class Friends of New Zealand’ at the Kea Global awards for their work supporting the NZ space sector.

Seminar Date: 4th May 2025

Topic: New Zealand's place in the world's market

Description: As a small trading nation far from our trading partners what are the forces that will shape our trade in the coming years? How might our policies align with the shifts ahead? What might be the challenges and opportunities?

Speaker: Nick Swallow is a Director at KPMG, based in Auckland, where he consults on strategy and sustainability. Before joining KPMG, Nick served as New Zealand’s Trade Commissioner to the United Kingdom and Ireland, promoting trade opportunities and strategic relationships in the region. Before this, he held the position of Consul General in São Paulo, Brazil, and was the Regional Director for trade in South America.

Nick's academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry and Genetics, and a Graduate Diploma in Management from the University of Canterbury, where he is recognised as a notable alumni. He recently graduated with a Master's in Sustainability Leadership with distinction from the University of Cambridge, his dissertation was on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in dairy farming in New Zealand. He is interested in the intersection between New Zealand’s trade, long-term economic well-being, and environmental sustainability.

Seminar Date: 6th April 2025

Topic: How will AI reshape jobs and the job market?

Description: AI has made dramatic advances in the past few years. In this seminar, Robin will share his insights about how that may flow through into the types of jobs that are available in the future and how they are done, including which industries and types of roles are likely to be affected most and soonest.

Speaker: Robin Hanson is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University and is also Chief Scientist at the technology prediction market, Consensus Point. His PhD is from CalTech, and he has two Masters degrees from the University of Chicago.

Seminar Date: 2nd March 2025

Topic: Molecular Manufacturing and Microscopic Medical Robots

Description: Molecular manufacturing aims to produce products where nearly all atoms are precisely positioned and bonded. These products include much stronger and lighter materials and molecular machines for applications such as quantum computing, environmental remediation and medicine. These machines have the potential for significantly better functionality then the many biological molecular machines operating inside our cells.

Academic labs and government agencies such as DOE are laying the foundation for this technology through the use of tools such as scanning probe microscopes to manipulate individual atoms. However, there are significant challenges to extending this work to commercial-scale molecular manufacturing.

This talk will describe the promise and challenges of molecular manufacturing, its application to building microscopic robots for medicine and some ethical issues they raise.

Speaker: Tad Hogg is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. His research includes defect-tolerant nanoelectronics, potential medical uses of microscopic robots, and applications of quantum computing. He is a participant in the Foresight Institute’s exploration of molecular machines, which includes exploring ways to address major diseases cheaply and effectively. He was previously at Hewlett-Packard Labs and Xerox PARC, where his work included an early market-based distributed computer system and economic experiments involving quantum information exchange. 

Tad holds a PhD from Stanford and BS from Caltech, both in physics. He has been an industry advisor at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics (IPAM) at UCLA and a visiting faculty member at the University of Girona and the Santa Fe Institute summer school on complex systems. Tad is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a Senior Member of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), and a Member of the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society.Title: The past, present, and future of AI

Seminar Date: 2nd February 2025

Topic: The past, present, and future of AI

Description: In this talk, Hazel will reflect on the history of AI, the current state of the field, and its likely future trajectory. Participants will be encouraged to share their own reflections on the past, experiences in the present, and expectations for the future.

Speaker: Hazel Watson-Smith is a Conversation Engineer on the Machine Learning team at Marlee and was previously a Research Integration Engineer for the Autonomous Animation team at Soul Machines. Hazel is passionate about human-computer cooperation and making high-quality, reliable AI systems with heart. She has a degree in computer science and psychology focusing on human-computer interaction, human development, and cognitive perception.

Seminar Date: 8th December 2024

Topic: The intergenerational value of regular population censuses whilst amidst a population storm

Description: Most countries are facing unprecedented demographic change as increased longevity and declining fertility coincide with large and volatile migration flows. Some, like New Zealand, also have indigenous populations whose distinctive characteristics had been long ignored in public policy but are now significant contributors to the economic potential of the population. Fast growing new migrant communities are also contributing to the population’s economic potential. The value added from population statistics is obscured in cost benefit analyses because of the weak connection between producers and users. In the population storm we now have, the diversity, scale and speed of change demands we adopt the oversight mechanisms common elsewhere.

Speaker: Len Cook - From 1992 to 2000 I was Government Statistician of New Zealand, after working in Statistics New Zealand in a variety of roles from 1971 to 1991, From 2000 to 2005 I was National Statistician of the United Kingdom. From 2015 to 2018, I was the Families Commissioner and Chair of the board of Superu.  I have been a member of the Remuneration Authority. Some recent roles include President, Institute of Public Administration NZ (2009-13); Member, NZ Royal Commission on Social Policy (1987-88); Vice-President, International Statistics Institute (2005-2009).  I have been Chair of the Risk, Investment and Audit Committee of the Royal Society (2018 -2022).

My longstanding interests are in the areas of population change and public policy, public administration, official statistics and the place of science in policy. I have more recently focused on accountability to Māori of the Justice system. Graduated in Mathematics and Statistics from Otago in 1971.  Elected Companion of the Royal Society of New Zealand.  I have honorary associate appointments at Otago University School of Medicine and NIDEA at the University of Waikato.

I have had a variety of roles and consulting tasks since I returned to New Zealand in late 2005, and these have drawn on my experience as a public-sector leader, statistician and expert in areas including population studies. I continue to work with experts in several fields as well as statistics, including health, social science, and demography.  Most of my projects involve applications of analysis to policy, aspects of public administration or official statistics. My more recent work has been to analyse the effect of Māori demographic dynamism and its interaction with punitive periods of policing in New Zealand. I have jointly led the preparation of a ten-year development plan for a Pacific statistical system.  I have involved in Pacific statistics in a variety of ways, including Friend of the Chair of the Pacific Statistics Steering Committee (2014-2019). 

Seminar Date: December 1st, 2024

Topic: Climate change – what’s happening and what do we do about it?

Description: The rate of climate change has accelerated in recent years and the impacts seem to be everywhere. This presentation will survey where the climate system is at, and where it could be going over coming decades. I’ll cover the implications for New Zealand and for the globe and will touch on the risks posed by upcoming “tipping points.” We’ll then look at what to do about it, how we go about stopping the changes before they become overwhelming. It is entirely possible for us to stop climate change, we just need to will to do it!
 
Speaker: James Renwick is a climate researcher who studies Southern Hemisphere climate variability, and the impacts of climate change on the Pacific, New Zealand and the Antarctic. He has been a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the last 20 years, contributing to three Assessment Reports. James was awarded the Prime Minister’s 2018 prize for Science Communication and was part of the team that won the Prime Minister’s Science Prize in 2019. He was appointed to the New Zealand Climate Change Commission in 2019.

Seminar Date: 6th October 2024

Topic: US election impact on New Zealand, the Indo-Pacific and beyond

Description: America goes to the polls on November 5 - and whatever the result, a new President in the White House in January 2025 is now a certainty. How will Kamala Harris or Donald Trump differ from Joe Biden, especially when it comes to geopolitics and foreign policy issues? What continuity and potential changes can we expect from US policies on China and the wider Indo-Pacific, including New Zealand? What will happen to AUKUS? And what about Gaza, the wider Middle East and the war in Ukraine?

Speaker: Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.