2025 STEM Conference: Inspiring Futures Through STEM

Save the date - Friday 21st November 2025!

Inspiring Futures Through STEM

• Creative approaches to STEM teaching

• Engaging strategies for problem solving

• Effective practices with data insights

• Applications of coding/programming, robotics and 3D printing

This year’s STEM conference will empower educators with innovative tools and strategies to create dynamic, inclusive learning environments that engage students and prepare them for the future. Attendees will explore practical methods for guiding students through problem solving, using data to deepen understanding, and integrating cutting-edge technologies like coding, robotics, and 3D printing.

Emphasizing hands-on learning, creativity, and effective pedagogy, the conference will highlight approaches that foster critical thinking, communication, and innovation. Through collaboration and the sharing of fresh ideas, educators will leave equipped to spark curiosity and design meaningful STEM experiences that inspire students to shape their own futures.

Keynote

Prof. Mat Lewsey
La Trobe Institute of Sustainable Agriculture and Food, Department of Animal, Plant and Soil Sciences, La Trobe University
Node Leader, ARC Centre of Excellence in Plants for Space
Node Director, Australian Plant Phenomics Network
Deputy Director, La Trobe Genomics Platform

From DNA to the Moon: Advancing Plants for Space and Sustainable Farming on Earth

Mat is a hands-on lab biologist turned data-crunching genome scientist. His lab studies how plants perceive the world around them and interact with their environments by regulation of their genomes. They apply this work to agricultural crops including cannabis, opium poppies, barley, oats and peas. Mat's expertise in organism-scale, single-cell resolution mapping of gene expression and modelling regulatory networks has generated recent technological advances in single-cell and spatial transcriptomics. His research in Plants for Space includes modifying plant networks in a precise, targeted fashion to improve plant growth for indoor growing environments and synthesis medicines in plants on demand.

Mat is currently working with NASA to better understand how plants will respond to being grown on the moon's surface - both what they look like to humans, and on the molecular level.

Call for Sessions

We would love to have you share your creative, innovative or inspiring STEM teaching strategies with other educators at our conference. Given the diversity of our conference participants, we would like to showcase the wide range of teaching and learning that is happening in schools.

Workshops are 60 mins in duration. Registration is free for the presenter and one co-presenter ($80 inc GST fee per additional co-presenter).

Possible workshop themes could include:

• Developing STEM programs

• Cross-curricular implementation of programs

• New technologies and ethics of their use

• Fostering critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving

• Collaboration and communication skills

Please contact us if you have an idea but are not sure if it is suitable for this conference.

Submissions are due by Friday 1st August 2025.

Sponsors & Exhibitors

We are delighted to extend an invitation for you to sponsor and/or exhibit at Quantum Victoria's STEM Conference. This esteemed conference is specifically designed for primary and secondary teachers of STEM, lab technicians, and pre-service teachers, and it presents a unique opportunity to engage with and promote resources that foster the teaching and learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics in schools.

Please see the Prospectus for costs (inc GST) and inclusions.