Dancing dissertation: translate your PhD thesis into dance and win a contest - Hindustan Times

How about translating your PhD thesis into a dance?  The Dance Your Phd contest can help you  explain your research through an artistic medium—interpretive dance. For the past five years international journal, Science, has been conducting  'Dance Your Phd' contest  for researchers  across the world to see which scientists can best explain their research  work through interpretive dance. The rules for the competition are simple—create a dance that is inspired by your PhD research. The applicant can be a PhD student  in science or he may have  even completed his/her Phd 50 years ago. The dance can be solo, duet or can involve  the whole lab group but the author of the PhD thesis has to be a part of it. The dance has to be made into a video and posted at Vimeo.com. The last date for  this year's contest  is October 1. The cash prizes are $500 for each Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Social Sciences category. The best Phd  dance will get an additional $500. Sneha Vivek's dance was awarded the runners up in Chemistry category in 2010. HT Photo Before the show, each dancer  is given time  to describe the research to the judges. So this could be  more than just a dance contest. Folded in  can be an  ability to summarize  the PhD work succinctly. Australians have dominated in recent years, with a physicist winning in 2011 for his stop motion dance about titanium hips and a chemist in 2012 for his old timey burlesque about aluminum crystals.  " What surprised me about the PhD  dance contest was its diversity. There has been broad sampling from various fields including biology, astronomy, quantum physics, anthropology and archeology," says John Bohannon, a biologist and correspondent for the journal Science who started the competition. To win the contest, the  dance needs to pull off two tricks—it  needs to be engaging art, and  should let the viewers understand the essence of the science behind the Ph.D. research,  Bohannon who  is a visiting researcher at Harvard University said. Says Sneha  Vivek,  director of Natya Ninada in California  who was one of the runners up in the contest: " One of my students asked me to translate her thesis to dance. After reading her thesis, I took help from my son to create original music. Then I called my students and asked them if they were interested in participating." via Science - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&usg=AFQjCNEtQ5vdRhwjl_t9oF4Z53l-mgpFXA&url=http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Dancing-dissertation-translate-your-PhD-thesis-into-dance-and-win-a-contest/Article1-1103243.aspx?htsw0023

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