Mon 02 Mar 2009

Sat 07 Mar 2009: 4pm - Peter Ng on "Life as a Sanctioned Professional Killer"

Category : talks

"Life as a Sanctioned Professional Killer"
by Professor Peter Ng
In conjunction with NUS Faculty of Science's 80th anniversary celebrations

Saturday 7th March 2009: 4pm – 5pm
Venue: LT 31 NUS Faculty of Science (next to Science Canteen)
All are welcome; admission is free

How to get there:

• Take SBS Bus 95 from Buona Vista MRT station.
• Drop off at the second stop after the bus turns in to NUH/NUS.
• See map: http://tinyurl.com/nuslt31

Registration required
Please click here to sign up

Abstract - "In the field of biodiversity science, the killing and preservation of animal specimens for research is an integral part of the discipline. This is all the more so in systematics, which is my forte. In the 25 years I have been in this field, thousands of crustaceans, fish and other animals have been killed in the name of 'science', and as a university professor, I have given my blessings to dozens of students and colleagues to kill even more. Does that make me a mass murderer? And what has this killing achieved in my discipline? How does this scale of scientific killing correlate with the so called ‘biodiversity crisis' facing the planet in which thousands of species are under threat of extinction? If a biologist's desire is to conserve how we rationalize with this need to kill? In a wide ranging talk, these seemingly conflicting aspects will be discussed and hopefully, clarified." About the speaker - Prof Peter Ng worked on his PhD at the National University of Singapore part-time while still an education officer with the Ministry of Education in the 1980s. He joined the then Department of Zoology in 1990, and has been involved in biodiversity and systematics research, primarily with crabs and fish over the last 17 years. Recognised as a international taxonomic expert on these groups, he also works on a wide variety of different biodiversity issues and has become deeply involved in environmental and conservation biology. He is widely published and on the editorial board of over a dozen international journals and a member of numerous international biological organizations. Notably he is a Commissioner with the International Commission for Zoological Nomenclature. He is currently director of both the Raffles Museum of Biodiversity Research and the Tropical Marine Science Institute at NUS.

Posted at 2:37AM UTC by N. Sivasothi | permalink | email |