For journalists, festival programmers, and venue press teams

50 words

Dr Weliton Menário Costa (Dr WELI) is a Sydney-based scientist-artist and behavioural ecologist (PhD, ANU). He turned his kangaroo research into Kangaroo Time, the AAAS Dance Your PhD Global Winner 2024, and founded WildWooHoo, a science-to-art studio where he coined sci pop.

100 words

Dr Weliton Menário Costa (Dr WELI) is a Sydney-based scientist-artist (PhD, ANU) who turned his kangaroo research into Kangaroo Time, the AAAS Dance Your PhD Global Winner 2024. Acclaimed in international media, it inspired him to found WildWooHoo, a science-to-art studio where he coined sci pop and is developing his first sci pop album. His work spans public engagement, keynotes and performances; practice-based research at WildWooHoo and academic research as a Visiting Fellow at ANU's CPAS/Popsicule; and transdisciplinary university and school workshops in science, music and dance. As WELI, he writes and performs, rooted in his Latin-Brazilian and queer communities.

400 words (long form)

Dr Weliton Menário Costa (Dr WELI) is a Sydney-based scientist-artist working across music, film, performance and public engagement. Born in rural Brazil and based in Sydney, he holds a PhD in ecology and evolution from the Australian National University, where his research on eastern grey kangaroo personality and social behaviour forms the foundation of his creative practice. He is a Visiting Fellow at ANU's Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), part of its Popsicule science-in-popular-culture group, where his academic writing examines science in popular culture.

In 2024 his music video Kangaroo Time won the AAAS Dance Your PhD, the contest's global top prize. Built from his kangaroo research and filmed in the paddocks where he studied their behaviour, it turned peer-reviewed science into a pop song and a dance cast drawn from multicultural Canberra. The work was acclaimed across 238+ media outlets worldwide, among them NPR, Smithsonian Magazine, The Guardian, BBC, ABC, Globo and the Triple J network. In 2025 he was named in the Falling Walls Engage Top 30 for bridging behavioural science and public culture.

Its reception led him to found WildWooHoo, a science-to-art studio where he coined sci pop, a term for popular songs that carry science as aesthetic, theme or method, ranging from real research to the fictional cultural imaginary. What makes a song sci pop is intention: it sources from science and brings scientific thinking into the songwriting and production. Through WildWooHoo he is developing his first sci pop album, EVER+GROW, and designs educational and cultural experiences: transdisciplinary university and school workshops in science, music and dance, and the Kangaroo Time Kids school program, alongside keynotes, conference activations and performances. Its wider pipeline includes the animated series Kanga-Kangaroo, a children's book line and an ongoing photography project. His practice-based research at WildWooHoo runs alongside his academic work at CPAS.

As WELI, he writes and performs original music that celebrates science, drawing on Latin, Brazilian and Afro influences, including the song Cabra da Peste, and rooted in his Latin-Brazilian and queer communities. His work has reached universities, science institutions, festivals, schools and public audiences across Australia, Brazil and internationally. He works in English and Portuguese.

He speaks, performs, teaches and creates in English, Portuguese and Spanish. His work has been programmed by universities, public-science institutions, festivals, schools and corporate audiences across Australia, Brazil, Europe, the UK and the United States.

Contact: bookings@drweli.com · drweli.com · wildwoohoo.com