Matt Hannifin

Matt Hannifin, the manager of Science Toy Magic LLC, gives engaging, humorous, and highly educational science presentations in eleven languages. He has travelled the world to inspire kids and adults alike with his love of language, culture, and science, via his joyous, hour-long presentations which became full-time after he closed the last retail store in Fort Collins, Colorado.

Matt started giving speaking-demonstrating presentations in Texas in the mid 1980s. He was a boomerang maker and taught boomerang lessons in Austin, Texas; Adelaide, South Australia; Tesuque Pueblo and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Fort Collins, Colorado, where he operated retail businesses. He travelled all four corners of New Mexico giving his presentations on boomerangs, holography and laser lightshows with the Visiting Scientist Program 1997-99. He was a classroom teacher for physics and chemistry on the college prep level at the Native American Preparatory School in New Mexico, 1999-2001. During all the years of his retail businesses until the last store closed in 2017, he demonstrated and explained the principles of 300 different science toys including boomerangs. In 2015 he gave about a dozen presentations in the Irish language in the south and west of Ireland. In 2017 he presented using some of his Warlpiri north of Alice Springs in Australia. He has also given a one-hour presentation in Mandarin, then one hour in French, then one hour in Spanish, all on the same day – and swore he would not do that to himself again!

Matt Hannifin is a commercial hot air balloon pilot, advanced scuba diver, has held pyrotechnician’s (fireworks) Class B (Texas) and High-Powered laser (New York) licenses for laser light shows. He piloted balloons in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade for 20 years, was Director of Installation at the Museum of Holography (NY, NY), is a patented inventor (boomerang for the blind), and has competed in four U.S. National boomerang tournaments. He juggles, rides a unicycle, plays the didgeridoo and has grown most varieties of carnivorous plants.