Dance Your PhD finalists are up!


If you’ve ever had a hard time explaining what your research is about, maybe you should consider interpretive dance. That’s what the Dance Your PhD contest at Science asks grad students to do. It’s fun, but the winner also gets a $500 dollar prize.

You can vote for whichever one you like the best here. To show I’m not inherently biased toward biology, my favorite was actually the chemistry one. I thought it did the best job at actually explaining the concept, while having the least abstract dancing. Oh, and I loved the part with Taq polymerase in the middle. Seriously, just watch it.

…Okay, it still had to do with DNA, shush.

Maybe in a couple of years I’ll be able to do this, though I kind of suck at dancing. Right now my lab rotation project wouldn’t be too interesting of a video though – not sure how to interpretively dance to coding in Python…

Comments

  1. Tommy says

    Hey, that was pretty cool! Despite me totally lacking the necessary biology (chemistry?) skills to actually understand what its really about I could still keep up with the narrative of the thing… I THINK!Entertaining none the less :)

  2. cpsmith says

    Well, if it is anything like when I was learning to use php in bioinformatics class, the dance would have to include a great deal of angry fist shaking and end with throwing a computer out the nearest window.

  3. Dan (the Man) says

    No, Python is way better and easier than php. I am actually still kinda surprised that so much is written in php.Jen – how is the coding going? Having always been a programmer, I would love to hear about it from a different perspective.

  4. Yellow Hatguy says

    I’m trying to think how to make laser-produced plasmas into an interpretive dance. I think it would work out much better as a Jet Li movie.

  5. chicagodyke says

    oh, grrl. you don’t even perceive the truth of this, even as it is supposed to be comedy.yes, you can dance your PhD, and you should. some will understand, and it’s almost, um, “spiritual” to perceive that when it happens. my PhD studies included analysis of “sacred dance” and for all i never joined them in their pagan faith, i certainly appreciate the power of The Dance. it’s fun to mock, but at the same time, it’s also sort of “true.”

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