Ballerina physicist who dances with robots is coming to the GoTech World event in Romania
GoTech World, the largest IT & Digital event in Central and Eastern Europe taking place November 3-4 at Bucharest's Romexpo, Pavilion B1, has announced its featured speaker, one of the most exciting figures of the scientific and artistic worlds, Dr. Merritt Moore.
Merritt is a world-renowned professional ballerina and physicist specializing in quantum physics, who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard's School of Physics and holds a Ph.D. in atomic and laser physics from Oxford University. She also has an impressive career as a ballet dancer, having worked with renowned international ballet companies in Zurich, Boston, the UK, and Norway.
Interestingly enough, Dr. Moore has a prior connection to Romania, as when she was 15 years old, she traveled to Viterbo, Italy, where she met Irina Rosca, a former dancer with the Bucharest National Opera Ballet, with whom she trained during her time in Italy.
Dr. Moore has become famous in recent years, particularly during the pandemic, for designing and choreographing industrial robots, through which she explores the future of AI/machine learning and the incredible potential that artificial intelligence has to empower human creativity. She works with an incredible team of artists and researchers to stage these exciting performances integrating science and art.
"I'm very interested in combining science and art," she says in an interview that appeared in the Financial Times. "Often when they meet, you get bad art and bad science. My main mission is: can taking research and science from an artistic perspective, and pushing it to the cutting edge of technology, make even better art?"
These performance acts combining art and technology have been featured in prestigious publications such as TIME, Financial Times, BBC, and Vogue, and Dr. Moore was invited as a keynote speaker at the Forbes Women's Summit in New York, participated in TEDx Oslo (2019), and was also a featured panelist on the US Embassy in London's Women in STEM panel.
One of the physical artist's unique projects was presented at the Victoria & Albert (London), the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, in 2017 as an installation called Slave/Master. This foregrounded the exploration of the 'boundaries' around human/robot interaction, reversing the traditional fear-based relationship depicted in sci-fi films of humans oppressing robots and robots oppressing humans.
Moore was also one of twelve candidates who underwent a rigorous selection process to become astronauts on the 2017 edition of the reality show broadcast on BBC Two, In 2018, she received the Forbes 30 under 30 award.
During the pandemic (2020), she was invited to Harvard ArtLab, an experimental workspace for artists, scholars, and creative processes, where she created a series of dances with an industrial robotic arm.
Merritt Moore is co-founder of the SASters (Science & Art Sisters) NGO through which she aims to create a community through which to run projects that support children and young people who dream of pursuing careers in both art and science. Currently, she is an adjunct professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, where she teaches courses in both robotics and dance.
Dr. Merritt Moore will be introduced to the Romanian audience as a featured speaker at GoTech World on Friday, November 4 at 10:45 on the Main Stage.
Tickets to GoTech World can be purchased directly from their website. Depending on the benefits a participant receives, there are three categories of tickets: Standard Pass (EUR 109), Content Pass (EUR 279), and VIP Pass (EUR 349).
For more information about the event and keynote speakers, follow the GoTech World website and the GoTech World Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter accounts.
(Photo source: GoTech World)
