About the founder
Dr Ken Dutton-Regester is the founder and director of Excite Science, a skin cancer researcher for 15 years and is the Digital Delivery Manager at Street Science. After completing his PhD at the Queensland University of Technology and QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in 2012 , Ken was awarded a NHMRC Early Career Fellowship to learn genome-wide functional approaches at the Broad Institute of Harvard MIT and Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Ken is an AMP Tomorrow Fund fellow (2018) and a Young Investigator on a Melanoma Research Alliance Team Science Award (2018-2021).
Throughout his academic career, Ken has been extremely passionate about communcating his research to diverse audiences and media platforms. In frequent demand as a keynote speaker at conferences, Ken also has presented at TEDxUQ, was a national finalist in Famelab and received a ‘Queensland Young Tall Poppy Scientist’ Award in 2017. Ken has also spoken at a variety events including Pint of Science, Science Nation, Melanoma March, and the ‘Wonder of Science’ Flying Scientist program. In August 2019, Ken was appointed to the Questacon Advisory Council by the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology (2019-2022).
Ken is also dedicated to helping his fellow collegues and early career researchers in achieving their career goals, whether that is within or outside of academia. He has served on numerous leadership bodies including being an International Officer for the National Postdoctoral Society (2015-2016), the Communications Commitee for the Society for Melanoma Research, and chairperson for the Associate Member Council for the American Association for Cancer Research (2014-2019). Seeing a lack of accessbile and engaging career advice video content of for emerging researchers, he founded a Youtube channel called Stemventurist.
Ken joined Street Science, Australia’s largest science incursion provider, in 2023 first as Innovation Manager, then as Digital Delivery Manager. Responsible for creating new and improving existing products, he built a new content creation department (using >11 staff), designed a $30,000 on-site studio, developed a curriculum-aligned content pipeline releasing weekly episodic content, oversaw the design and delivery of the Street Science Extended Learning Portal (130 courses, >500 users), increased digital STEM interactions (50,000+ kids in 1.5 years), and helped create the Street Science Partnership Program (three-year partnerships with school communities that upskills teachers and delivers increased impact and engagement).
Highlights
$1.8 million in academic grant and fellowship funding
34 Publications in journals such as Science, Nature and Nature Genetics
11,000+ Citations (Google Scholar) and H-index of 23
Personally raised over $23,000 for cancer research
