Biologist Carin Bondar of Chilliwack is heading to Edinburgh, Scotland this weekend to take part in TEDGlobal as one of its inspired summer presenters.
"It's a little overwhelming," Bondar tells The Progress.
She's preparing to be one of 70 international speakers at the 'Think Again' TEDGlobal Conference June 10-14, as well as some jet-setting and shooting video across the globe for science.
"I can't even tell you how thrilled I am to have been asked, as a mother of four from Chilliwack, to go to TEDGlobal, and to be doing all these crazy things."
Bondar is a science communicator, or "a biologist with a twist," as she says on her website. She's a blogger, web and TV host, crayfish expert, and the author of The Nature of Human Nature.
She likes to tackle an array of weird and wonderful science topics.
Dr. Bondar has netted more than seven million hits on the Wild Sex series she hosts, and she was shooting another web series pilot based on her book for PBS at Kim Mallory's photo studio in downtown Chilliwack last week.
The people at TED contacted Bondar, who has a PhD in population ecology from UBC, to ask her to be a speaker.
"I'll be talking about several things you didn't know about wild sex."
The visual and short video based talk she has prepared will look at how the evolution of society was influenced by sex. She'll be showing lots of um, er, graphics. But since the education level of attendees is so high, the talk will be quite formal, with academic language — without the use of slang or street language, she underlines.
Bondar was just back in Chilliwack from Tahiti and all over the U.S. where she shot episodes with non other than Stephen Hawking, as one of a team of five scientists. She was working 14 hours a day on two series for the Discovery Channel, the hugely popular Outrageous Acts of Science and the high-tech based Brave New World.
The high-tech show had her embedded with virtual SWAT teams and driving an electric BMW through the streets of Boston.
It's onto the prestigious TED talks this week and then Australian National Science Week after that, and something with the Science Channel as well.
"I have to take my vitamins," Bondar says with a laugh. "Also my kids keep me very grounded."
For the PBS web series based on the book, Matthew Hawkins was directing it and Karina Lanting of Project K was styling it the day The Progress took some photographs at Mallory's studio.
"I have high hopes for it," she says about the series based on the book, The Nature of Human Nature.
She's hoping the whole series will be shot locally.
Follow more on www.carinbondar.com or on Twitter @DrBondar or on Facebook page where she has 60,000+ likes.
jfeinberg@theprogress.com
Twitter.com/chwkjourno