Story | Stardust Impact

MEET STARDUST SOCIETY

Stardust Society is built through an evolving network of collaborators, researchers, creatives, and supporters connected through shared interests across science, culture, and society.

Marta Kaprale

Stockholm, Sweden

Stardust Impact Founder | Research & Innovation Engagement I Filmmaker |

The idea for Stardust Impact grew over years of working across film, education, entrepreneurship, public sector work, science, and social innovation. Marta kept noticing the same pattern. People carried valuable knowledge and experience, yet many of these remained unseen, or disconnected from one another. A turning point came while working on a project involving scientists. During one interview with

an adaptive optics physicist, he spoke about astronomy and stars with such fascination that it became an aha moment for Marta. She remembers wondering why she was the only person hearing this conversation. More people should have the opportunity to access and encounter this kind of curiosity, dedication, and knowledge. That moment stayed with her.

It took years before it gradually found its form in Stardust Impact and in the desire to create new ways

for people, ideas, and experiences to connect across fields. The name Stardust reflects a worldview grounded in interconnectedness between people, fields, and lived experiences.

Aquatic Researcher | Bridging Science and Society | Art & Science Collaboration

Konstantinos grew up next to the biggest port in Greece, in Piraeus. Before studying environmental oceanography, he spent years involved in theatre groups, that only strengthened his belief that creative expression can help people connect with complex ideas. His scientific path later brought him to Sweden, where he completed a PhD exploring how organic material breaks down across natural ecosystems and contributes to the planet’s carbon cycle. Today, as a postdoctoral researcher at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, he studies how climate change affects coastal ecosystems in the Baltic Sea.

For Konstantinos, research is only part of the story. He believes science should move beyond academia and connect with people’s everyday lives. By bringing together science and artistic expression, he explores new ways of making environmental questions understandable, relatable, and emotionally present.

Konstantinos Vaziourakis

Uppsala, Sweden

Cassandra Forrester

Toronto, Canada

Environmental Research | Bridging Cultural & Ecological Systems

Cassandra’s background is in project coordination and operations, where she spent over a decade working with complex systems, information, and decision making processes. Over time, this led her toward environmental conservation, earth systems, and the ecological and social histories connected to land and water. Geographic Information Systems became a natural extension of this interest as

a way to make environmental and spatial knowledge visible and useful in practice.

What draws her to Stardust Impact is the connection between data, lived experience, and storytelling. She shares the belief that meaningful change begins when different forms of knowledge are brought together. She brings a systems oriented perspective together with a growing technical foundation in environmental science, and a strong curiosity about how knowledge and experience connect across fields.