Come and warm your cockles with some heart-warming science - how to capture carbon, reduce plastics and develop cheap drugs. And the best news: beer is good for your microbiome.

Grab a warming beverage and a snack and sit back with researchers from all over the science kingdom talking about their efforts to make the world a better place.

The Line Up

Cancer researcher Anneke Blackburn (ANU John Curtin) is part of a movement toward open source pharma - a new, non-profit way of developing drugs that save lives.

Robert de Salle (American Natural History Museum) studies molecular systematics. This, you may not realise, makes him a beer expert. He’ll be sharing stories from his recent book over four beers in 15 minutes.

Miriam Blackburn (Canberra Hospital) likes stories about giants: she says they really exist. Fairytales? Nope, endocrinology!

Caitlin Byrt (ANU Biology) says nature can show us a way to avoid a water security crisis

Author Rebecca Blackburn (Green is Good) is on a mission to go plastic free, she’ll share tips and tricks she’s learned along the way.

Some of us like to eat protein. At Lily Wang (ANU Chemistry) studies it, to work out how its complex structure enables it to do the amazing things that make cells, organs, humans, function!

Ming-Dao Chia (ANU Biology) studies the DNA in soil at, which could show a way to capture carbon, while making farmlands better

Four years after we sent a probe to Pluto, we’re still analysing the amazing data it sent back. But, asks Phil Dooley (Phil Up On Science) should it be reinstated as a planet?