Mark's Attempt to Smash the World Record for the Longest Marathon Lecture
In October 2015 Mark produced and performed a charity fund raising 24 hour space lecture. Six years on and fully recovered from the physical and mental challenge he is now setting his sights on attempting to break the Guinness World Record for the longest marathon lecture. The current record was set in 2014 by Arvind Mishra from the Graphic Era University in India who lectured for 139 hours, 42 minutes and 56 seconds on Scientific Computation. That is the equivalent of lecturing for over FIVE AND A HALF DAYS
Countdown to the start of Mark's attempt
Warming Up
Mark has been preparing hard for the attempt. During the Norwich Science Festival in October 2019, he went two nights without sleep and to test his ability to lecture when sleep deprived, after 58 hours awake performed a one hour lecture. The lecture titled “Introduction to the Universe – Sleep Not Essential” went without a hitch despite referring to ‘hedrogen’ when talking about hydrogen, helium and stellar evolution! When asked how the lecture went Simon Fox from the Youth STEMM award reported “Disappointingly Slick”!
Fund Raising
As a proud ambassador for Barnardo’s he is always on the lookout for ways to raise money for them. His World Record attempt is a great opportunity to do that and already, Mark has already raised over £3500. You can donate on his JustGiving page by clicking on this button
Science and Outreach
Mark is always keen to seek science outreach opportunities and this sleep deprived experience presents one that is too hard to resist. He is working with teachers to develop school lesson plans and will be using EEG machines and other health monitoring devices to collect and present various elements of biological data on this site throughout the event.
It is a great opportunity for sleep deprivation and cognition studies to investigate how Mark’s body responds to such deep levels of sleep deprivation so he is working with research teams in Sweden and Cambridge, UK to help with their research.
The Team
Mark would not be able to do this all himself. He is working with an amazing team of volunteers that are donating their time to make the event a success:
Event Manager : George Isherwood
PR : Anna Stevenson
Social Media : Kirk Miller
Education : Rachael Wood
Norwich Science Festival Liaison : Natalie Bailey
Updates
To get the latest updates follow the twitter feed @gwrlecture or head over to the Facebook Page
Get in Touch
If you would like to get involved either as a sponsor or a volunteer then you can reach the team by filling in this form.
Sponsors
Mark and his team would like to thank the following organisations who have supported the event:
