The recipe for an awesome scientific dance video is loads like that for a scrumptious loaf of bread. It takes a variety of planning, some pulling and stretching, and a heaping of yeast. That was the components for Povilas Šimonis, at the least. The Lithuanian scientist’s colourful and intelligent interpretation of the electrical stimulation of yeast—replete with individuals representing prancing cells and mouthwatering baked items—is the winner of this 12 months’s “Dance Your Ph. D.” contest.
Šimonis’s Ph.D. investigated how yeast, the single-celled fungus that powers bread baking and a number of different organic processes, behaves when pulsed with electrical energy. Electric shocks might help open yeast cells’ membranes, inactivate them, or make them extra environment friendly. And though he spends a lot of his time within the lab prodding at cells, the biologist is surrounded by artists in his on a regular basis life. “My parents are music teachers, my fiancée and brother are professional actors, and I spent many years performing in theater so many of my friends are artists,” Šimonis says.
He needed to higher clarify his thesis, accomplished at Lithuania’s Center for Physical Sciences and Technology and Vilnius University, to his family members and to the broader world. So Šimonis recruited a lot of these buddies to script, rating, and choreograph his successful video. The slick consequence took months of planning and a whirlwind 2 days of taking pictures to create.
The Dance Your Ph.D. contest, which was created by former Science correspondent John Bohannon in 2008, invitations scientists to interpret their theses by way of motion and commit the act to video. Bohannon nonetheless runs the competition and now works at Primer, a synthetic intelligence firm that sponsors the competitors.
The contest is split into 4 classes—biology, chemistry, physics, and social sciences—and is judged by a panel of esteemed dancers, scientists, and artists. Each class winner receives a prize of $750, and the general winner receives an extra $2000. (Primer had provided one other prize this 12 months for machine studying–associated dances however nobody entered; Bohannon says the corporate will nonetheless contemplate dances tweeted at @primer_ai, Primer’s account.)
Šimonis received the biology class, along with the general prize, on the power of his video’s pleasant storytelling and a focus to element, says choose Matt Kent from the dance firm Pilobolus. “Great dance creates an atmosphere or a world,” he says. “And that’s exactly what the winner did.”
The 4 winners didn’t simply use motion creatively or clarify their analysis clearly, however intertwined the 2, the judges say. “The science enhances the dance, and the dance enhances the science,” explains choose Emily Kent, additionally of Pilobolus. And in fact, every winner was a blast to observe, the judges say.
That’s precisely why Šimonis needed to enter the dance off. “Usually when you’re looking at scientific presentations you stop listening within a minute if you’re not hooked,” he says. “Our idea was to make everything attractive, but for people who become interested in the science, they are able to dig deeper.”
Now that his shut buddies have seen the video and perceive his analysis in a brand new manner, Šimonis seems like he’s lastly accomplished his dissertation. “Now, at last, I’ve defended my Ph.D.”
Watch all of the winners under.
Overall winner and biology class winner
Povilas Šimonis, “Investigation of yeast cell responses to pulsed electric field treatment”
Chemistry class winner
Mathilde Palmier, University of Bordeaux, “Understanding the aging bone biology: focus on osteocytes”
Physics class winner
Xiaohan Wu, Harvard University, “Probing cosmic reionization using the Lyman-alpha forest and the cosmic microwave background”
Social sciences class winner
Senka Žižanović, University of Zagreb, “Active learning as a didactic-methodical paradigm of contemporary teaching”
Judges of this 12 months’s contest
