Friday, November 21, 2008

Dance your Ph.D.

Check out some of the winners of the second annual Science Dance Contest, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Contestants choreographed and performed dances illustrating their Ph.D. theses.

This is my favorite, the winner in the graduate-student division: Sue Lynn Lau, of the University of Sydney, Australia, and some friends interpreted her thesis, titled “The role of vitamin D in beta cell function.”



(The Sugar Plum Fairy is feeding the beta cells marshmallows, a.k.a glucose.)

Go geeks! You never see anything like this on "Dancing with the Stars."

I wouldn't have a clue how to dance this thesis: “Resolving pathways of functional coupling in human hemoglobin using quantitative low temperature isoelectric focusing of asymmetric mutant hybrids.”

But here is the winner in the professors' division, Vince LiCata, a biology professor at Louisiana State University, with his interpretation of said thesis, which he calls, "A Molecular Dance in the Blood, Observed."



The music is perfect; it's Laurie Anderson, "Born, Never Asked," from the album Big Science. (Years ago, I had an excerpt from "O Superman" as the outgoing message on my answering machine for months, until my friends begged me to remove it.)

2 comments:

Petrina said...

This is hilarious. Where do you find these things?

Lisa M. Orange said...

My resident Web search assistant pointed me to it.