Wednesday October 14th
Howler (7-11 Dawson Street, Brunswick)
Doors: 7 pm
Show: 7:30 pm
Tickets: $15 + BF – Available Now!!
3 presenters share a topic they are NERDY about while the audience shares a drink.
The second last show of the 2026 Nerd Nite Melbourne year, but we’re not slowing down! This October, we’re kicking off by getting a bit spooky with finding human remains, investigating bewildering text messages from a mother, and a treat from an international guest – the host of Nerd Nite Fort Collins (US)!
Come to get creeped out (by either the bodies or the texts, your choice), and see how the US does Nerd Nite!
Victoria Berezowski
Where should I hide the body?!
Description: After someone commits a homicide, a common after thought is “What should I do with the body?!” In an effort to get rid of the evidence, some people will bury their victims, and unfortunately, these can be really hard to find. My research looks at combing what we know about human behaviour and some cool ground monitoring technologies to help find these graves. This is really important not only because it can help us prosecute the person responsible, but it can also bring the victims back home to their loved ones.
Bio: Toss out your conference bio and start fresh. Unless you have a Nobel prize or a teen choice award, the credentials probably aren’t important to our audience. Tell us what you’re passionate about. Be human.
Tori is a forensic anthropologist (think of the TV show Bones!). If she is not out in field looking for graves, she is in the classroom teaching the next generation of forensic scientists at Deakin University.
Aaron Agostinia
Real Texts My Mother Has Sent Me
Description: I am a biologist, but by far the most interesting creature I have ever encountered is my mother. I have known her (literally) my entire life, but I am yet to figure her out. She remains disinterested in my stories unless I provide the full legal names of every participant; she insists I have never seen Minions 2; she once asked me what a gay wedding was. Come watch me deliver her texts like slam poetry and spiral into tangents about literally the most interesting person I have ever met.
Bio: Aaron Agostini is a writer, scientist, and Teen Choice Award winner originally from New Jersey, currently living in Melbourne, Australia — completely of his own volition; no one made him move here. His scientific work has stretched from brewing beer to stem cells to marsupial skulls, while his creative work explores themes of repetition, anxiety, and repetition. He finishes his PhD in May, wants a job, and insists his relationship with his mother is completely fine. He is also a chronic liar about winning Teen Choice Awards. See proof of competence at aaronagostini.com or find him at @supplemental_figures.
Socials: @supplemental_figures (Instagram, youtube and tiktok)
Justin Fritz
You Had to be There
Description: Nerd Nite is great for one reason: the speakers reanimate what they have lived. They stand up and hand over a passion in a way no screen and no automation can manage. I have lost whole evenings to this, completely absorbed and enchanted by whatever the topic of the day turned out to be.
So is this a talk about Nerd Nite, at Nerd Nite? Kind of. But no.
It is a talk about camaraderie, community and enchantment, and what they are actually worth. I have no answers to the big issues facing us, and I say us because we are all connected. What a room like this can do is draw a map between us, an understanding of the world we are in. You cannot plot a course without one.
I have been lucky enough to be in the room for a few remarkable things. I will bring what I can of them.
Bio: Justin Fritz designs the insides of computer chips. Some of his work is in Microsoft’s HoloLens, some in the FPGAs running Azure data centres, and some in programmable logic at Xilinx. Before all that he navigated KC-130s for the US Marines, and in between he took a master’s in information theory, the mathematics of what survives being sent somewhere. He hosts Nerd Nite Fort Collins, writes trivia software nobody asked for, and is visiting from Colorado with his wife Jamie, a Nerd Nite boss in her own right, who has heard all of this before and is coming anyway.