Join us on November 14th, as Becca Krueger presents: Deadly Dimorphics!!

Enjoying the outdoors in our beautiful Wisconsin is a wonderful thing... until it tries to kill you! What's even scarier is when the thing in nature trying to do you in is invisible to the naked eye... Wisconsin is a perfect environment for the deadly dimorphic fungus Blastomyces to proliferate, and our state has a history of significant outbreaks of blastomycosis. But should we really be worried? Should we stay indoors? And what the heck is a dimorphic fungus anyway? Come learn more about blastomycosis and all the cool things we know about this fungus and a few others!!

Photo credit: cdc.gov

Becca Krueger APNP is a nurse practitioner with the Infectious Disease team at Froedtert Hospital & the Medical College of Wisconsin. She received her Bachelor of Science in nursing in 2005 from UW-Madison and her Master's of Science in Nursing with an Acute Care Nurse Practitioner Degree from Marquette University in 2011. She has worked at FH/MCW in both critical care and now in Infectious Diseases since 2015. She sees a wide variety of patients with infectious diseases including solid organ and bone marry transplant patients. In addition to her clinical role, she is an associate director of advanced practice for the Medical College Physicians within MCW.

Outside of work, Becca has 3 boys ages 9, 5, and 18 months and spends as much time outdoors as possible! You can find her biking, running, skiing, hiking, and skipping stones into Lake Michigan at Big Bay Beach (just a few blocks from her house) on many evenings with the boys. 

Join us on October 10th, as Tony the Bug Whisperer himself, brings us Bugs in VR!!

Prior to Covid, Tony's Creepy Crawly Zoo traveled the country with its live insect show that lit wildfires of scientific curiosity in children. The show was an experience kids never forgot. Tony had been working to create a permanent location that was an insect/reptile themed natural science park for kids. just when all seemed to be on the verge of happening and Tony even published a science activity book to enhance the live experience, the pandemic struck, and all those years of work came to a screeching halt.

As with many businesses that revolved around large crowds, you had to either adapt or die. Most similar shows went virtual. "I did one virtual show, and it was just awful. Sitting in front of a webcam holding an insect wasn't even remotely like the live show. I had to find a new way to recreate an "experience"." Tony turned to an idea he had many years earlier, Virtual Reality. The problem was, the technology for a VR macro camera did not exist, so he invented one!

Fast forward half a dozen failed attempts and 2 year later, Macro VR is now a "reality". The result was an 8k camera that can take you inside the habitats of the creatures in the Creepy Crawly Zoo and let you see the world as if you were 2" tall. Tony will be discussing how his vision of an insect/reptile themed natural science park for kids has been reborn in the Metaverse. Attendees will have a chance to experience it and even meet some of the animals of the Creepy Crawly Zoo!

Antonio Gustin (The Bug Whisperer TM) is best known for his live show, Tony's Creepy Crawly Zoo, a traveling live insect show for kids. Tony's Creepy Crawly Zoo, was a dynamic and theatrical show, that visited nearly 2 million children in the last 3 decades and continues today. In 2005, Antonio turned his attention to video and developed the character, The Bug Whisperer. He produced a pilot episode titled, Tales from the Bug Whisperer. He wrote it, filmed it, edited it and produced it on a budget of less than $5000. It received rave reviews and five international film festival awards. A person of eclectic interests, he is an accomplished martial artist, studied languages and art in college before finally returning to his boyhood obsession of entomology (the study of insects). He is also an avid outdoorsman and enjoys bow hunting, fly fishing and living in the mountains for weeks at a time. These days, the Bug Whisperer is a self-proclaimed science evangelist. He started the nonprofit organization, the Gateway Science Project, which uses insects to excite scientific curiosity in kids.