Choose Your Own Adventure: Chemistry or Games

Friday, 21 April – 11:00am – 12:00pm (SUCS, School Seminar)

Location: Chemistry Lecture Theatre 4 and Online (Zoom)

Meeting URL: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/88946634903?pwd=MXloSVo2ZXBCMVJMeUdyN1YxS1lHZz09

Meeting ID: 889 4663 4903

Password: 509979

Speaker: Dr Matthew Dunstan, Co-Founder of Postmark Games

[Email: m.t.dunstan@gmail.com]

Host:  Dr Yu Heng Lau

Abstract: I’ve had a somewhat unusual career to date, defined by two equal passions: science and games. In this talk I’ll explore my experiences, including moving overseas to study for a PhD, the tricky navigation of career options afterwards, and how I managed to end up as a game designer after all of it! I’ll touch on how to manage different interests during your time in academia, and the importance of cultivating a life outside the laboratory. I’ll also talk about the importance of games in education, and how you can combine these two interests for science outreach.

Bio: Matthew Dunstan completed his B Sc (Adv) Hons degree at the University of Sydney in 2010, before moving to the UK to start a PhD in Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. He was supervised by Professor Clare Grey, developing computational and experimental methods to predict new materials for high temperature carbon capture, and completed his PhD in 2015. From 2016-2019 he was a Junior Research Fellow at Clare College in Cambridge and continued his work utilising high-throughput computations, diffraction and solid-state NMR to study various materials for fuel cells, solid state batteries and carbon capture.

Matthew also had his first board game published in 2013, and to date has had over 50 games published all around the world, selling over a million units combined. He is also the co-founder of Postmark Games, a publisher focussing on print at home games. In 2022 he formally left academia to pursue a full time career as an independent games designer. He still enjoys combining his two passions of games and science, such as co-designing ‘Diamond: the Game’, a board game to help educate school children as to the science and careers available in the Diamond Light Source, a synchrotron in the UK.