Trends from the Trenches Podcast

David Hewlett on Making Learning Fun and Data Standardization

July 8, 2025

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David Hewlett, founder of Tech Bandits, makes learning fun and creates an environment where children—the future generation of scientists—can feel comfortable with curiosity. With host Ari Berman, Hewlett delves into his acting career, which consists of a wide range of scientist roles, and the origins of Tech Bandits. He also shares his thoughts on how science needs to be communicated better (and why scientists need to know how to present their work to the world), what technology can help with regarding the future of life sciences and healthcare, and standardizing data.


David Hewlett, Founder, Tech Bandits 
Since the age of four, hiding behind the sofa watching Doctor Who battle the Daleks, David Hewlett dreamed of becoming a Time Lord. While he’s yet to master time travel, he did find a place for himself, bringing scientists (and the occasional genius) to life on screen.

David is best known for his iconic role as Dr. Rodney McKay in Stargate Atlantis. His numerous film and television credits include Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water; Nightmare Alley; and Cabinet of Curiosities: Graveyard Rats, directed by his longtime friend and collaborator Vincenzo Natali (with whom he also worked on cult classics CUBE and Splice). David’s other notable appearances include Roland Emmerich’s Midway; Caesar: Rise of the Planet of the Apes; and recurring roles on TV series such as MGM’s Clarice; Peacock’s Departure; Apple’s SEE (with his Stargate co-star, Jason Momoa); and currently he’s Famous Ray on Hallmark’s hit series, Mistletoe Murders.

A passionate, lifelong learner, David founded TechBandits.org to inspire the next generation of brilliant minds. He is the creator and community partner for the University of Toronto Scarborough’s Bioscience Escape Puzzle learning project. He writes the science and tech inspiring Email Of Awesome Awesomeness; hosts the podcast “I’m With (Stargate) Genius”, featuring guests from the worlds of science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM); and co-hosts the lively and irreverent accessibility and disability rights podcast “Damn Dirty Abes” with activist and educator, Lance Carr.

As a YouTube Certified content creator, David engages a diverse audience of parents, educators, students, gamers, and science and sci-fi fans. He actively shares insights and sparks conversations on life-long learning, accessibility, science, technology, engineering, arts, and education on social media and at conferences and conventions around his favorite planet, Earth.


Ari Berman

Host Bio

Ari Berman

Ari received his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology with a focus on Neuroscience in 2005 from the University of Texas at Austin (UT). His graduate work focused on studying the effects of genetics on addictive behaviors such as alcoholism. His postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging focused on improving our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases of aging (specifically, Parkinson’s and Alzheimers Disease) by utilizing a combination of laboratory science and animal models, as well as bioinformatics and computational biology. Ari is also an expert in Scientific Computing specializing in high performance computing (HPC), high-performance networks, data centers, storage, cloud, general IT infrastructure, and bioinformatics and data analytics. He has been designing, building, and operating scientific computing environments for 26 years and strives to advocate for science and empower researchers to make discoveries from their complex datasets. His ultimate goal is to help create a dynamic enough abstraction of flexible infrastructure from research end-users to enable anyone to analyze and gain knowledge from very complex datasets.

A life science IT consulting firm at the intersection of science, data, and technology, BioTeam builds innovative scientific data ecosystems that close the gap between what scientists want to do with data—and what they can do. Learn more at www.bioteam.net.