dance your phd winners 2023

• Biz & IT

Tiny “nano-sponges” inspire killer moves in 2023 Dance Your PhD winning video

The fun side of serious science: "We’re just normal, fun, creative people.”

University of Oregon chemist Checkers Marshall took top honors in the 2023 Dance Your PhD contest, combining hand fans, blue balloons, and original lyrics to make a dance video explaining their work on "nano-sponge" materials for use in carbon capture and drug delivery. Other winning videos provided creative takes on how local trees in the Amazon rainforest produce a protective hormone in response to drought; diffusing ions at the nanoscale, illustrated with a tango; and an artificial intelligence model called PsychGenerator that aims to bring personality and mental health attributes to AI.

As we've reported previously , the Dance Your PhD contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon. It was previously sponsored by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and is now sponsored by AI company Primer, where Bohannon is the director of science. Bohannon told Slate in 2011 that he came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to get a group of stressed-out PhD students in the middle of defending their theses to let off a little steam. So he put together a dance party at Austria's  Institute of Molecular Biotechnology , including a contest for whichever candidate could best explain their thesis topics with interpretive dance.

The contest was such a hit that Bohannon started getting emails asking when the next would be—and Dance Your PhD has continued ever since. It's now in its 15th year. There are four broad categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social science, with a fairly liberal interpretation of what topics fall under each. Winners were chosen from 28 entries submitted from 12 different countries. All category winners receive $500, while Marshall, as the overall champion, will receive an additional $2,000. And the contest has a new sponsor this year: Sandbox AQ , an Alphabet spinoff focused on tackling large problems by bringing together artificial intelligence and quantum technologies.

Marshall's PhD thesis dealt with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), crystalline polymer materials formed by binding metal ions with polydentate organic linkers. The resulting porous network is sponge-like, making these materials ideal for carbon capture applications, as well as drug delivery, detoxifying nerve agents, and water purification. Marshall aims to make smaller and more efficient MOFs. These nano-MOFs can be modified by adding a molecule to stop the crystal's growth or removing an electron to free up the flow of electrons through the structure.

Marshall shot their video in the lab and a friend's backyard. They brought high school and college videomaking experience to the project, as well as a long-standing love of juggling, spinning, and other forms of "flow arts." For instance, Marshall used fans to represent the electrons in a standard MOF—“I can’t dance unless there’s something in my hands"—passing the fans back and forth with a friend to show how metal ions (represented by blue papier-mâché balloons) exchange electrons.

To represent the nano-MOFs, Marshall used a toy Hoberman sphere , a popular child's toy inspired by the isokinetic structure patented by artist and engineer Chuck Hoberman. It looks like a geodesic dome, but thanks to joints that act like scissors, the sphere can fold into a fraction of its original size.

Marshall even wrote their own music, having written and performed slam poetry for years, complete with a sly reference to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. “I thought, ‘How can I make my thesis into a one-page slam poem? How can I make it, like, sound cool? And hopefully make it rhyme a little bit,’” Marshall told Science . “Making the video and writing my thesis were approximately an equal amount of work. [But these initiatives] really help aspiring scientists see this other side of science where we’re also just normal, fun, creative people.”

Check out the winners of the biology, physics, and social sciences categories below.

Biology category winner

Israel Sampaio Filho, National Institute of Amazonian Research, Leaf abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis: the main source of Amazon rainforest response to warming

Physics category winner

Dr. Evgenii Glushkov, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Exploring optically active defects in wide-bandgap materials using fluorescence microscopy

Social Sciences category winner

Huy Vu, Stony Brook University, Artificial Intelligence with Personality

• 2. The key moment came 38 minutes after Starship roared off the launch pad
• 3. Scientist behind superconductivity claims ousted
• 4. Google stops letting sites like Forbes rule search for “Best CBD Gummies“
• 5. Apple TV+ spent $20B on original content. If only people actually watched.

By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies and similar tracking technologies described in our privacy policy .

• Member Directory
• LinkedIn Facebook Twitter/X Instagram
• Ceramic Tech Today
• Video: ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ contest winners dance their way through materials and AI research

June 21, 2023

• News & Publications

[Image above] Screenshot from the overall and chemistry category winner’s video of the 2023 Dance Your Ph.D. contest. Credit: Checkers Marshall , YouTube

What better way to celebrate the first day of summer than enjoying the winning videos from this year’s Dance Your Ph.D. contest?

Dance Your Ph.D. is an annual contest run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Science , the peer-reviewed academic journal of AAAS. It was created in 2008 by John Bohannon , former Science correspondent and now director of science at artificial intelligence company Primer.

Dance Your Ph.D. is a chance for scientists to interpret their Ph.D. theses through movement rather than the traditional formats of PowerPoint presentations or academic journals. The contest is divided into four categories—biology, chemistry, physics, and social sciences—and videos of each performance are judged by a panel of dancers, scientists, and artists.

The 2023 contest received 28 entries from 12 countries, and the winners were announced in March . View the winners of each category below, and perhaps be inspired to submit your own research next year!

Overall winner and chemistry category winner

Checkers Marshall, University of Oregon, “Nanoparticles of metal-organic frameworks: A general synthetic method and size-dependent properties”

Checkers Marshall is a materials synthesis chemist at Svante, Inc. (Vancouver, Canada). During their Ph.D. studies at the University of Oregon, they aimed to make metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) smaller and more effective for various applications, including water filtration and nerve agent detoxification.

In a Science article , Marshall says that the use of fans in the video, which represented electrons, was nonnegotiable: “I can’t dance unless there’s something in my hands.” They also channeled years of writing and performing slam poetry to pen the song that accompanied the dance.

Biology category winner

Israel Sampaio Filho, National Institute of Amazonian Research, “Leaf abscisic acid (ABA) biosynthesis: the main source of Amazon rainforest response to warming”

Israel Sampaio Filho is a doctoral student at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil. His video was staged by dozens of people at the Institute’s forest management base in Manaus. It explains how the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) protects Amazonian trees against high temperatures and intense droughts, which can lead to excessive water loss.

The Institute’s Graduate Program in Tropical Forest Sciences issued a congratulations on its website following the announcement of the 2023 contest winners.

Physics category winner

Evgenii Glushkov, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, “Exploring optically active defects in wide-bandgap materials using fluorescence microscopy”

Evgenii Glushkov is a research and development engineer at Swiss technology innovation center CSEM. During his Ph.D. studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), he explored the aqueous transport of protons, such as at the interface between hexagonal boron nitride crystals and aqueous solutions .

His video aimed to show the similarities between dancing tango couples and diffusing ions at the nanoscale. In a LinkedIn post , Glushkov explains that he fell in love with Argentinian tango at EPFL, where he learned it on campus from enthusiasts in the ArchiTango association .

“Since then, tango became a part of my Ph.D. life. And I always wanted to share how much it helped me to get through the Ph.D. struggles, as well as personal issues,” he writes.

Social sciences category winner

Huy Vu, Stony Brook University, “Artificial intelligence with personality”

Huy Vu is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. His research involves using machine learning, particularly natural language processing, to help understand the relationship between human language and their underlying psychological constructs.

Vu’s video describes the PsychGenerator, an artificial intelligence model he helped to develop that generates natural language characteristics of specified psychological constructs, such as personality traits and mental health.

In a Stony Brook press release , Vu says that ““As a last-year Ph.D. student, the process of making this video in a way summarizes my whole Ph.D. journey, with all the ups and downs and the belief that everything will turn out well at the end.”

Lisa McDonald

Upcoming Events

Related posts.

Video: How porcelain established itself as musical material

November 20, 2024

Video: Glass art exhibition explores the history and implications of genetic food modification

November 13, 2024

Video: Materials of Halloween—a look at the history and science of some spooky season traditions

October 30, 2024

Trending Today

Get Down With This Year’s “Dance Your PhD” Winners

Acrobatic human tornadoes and pair-dancing inertial confinement fusion implosions are among this year’s favorites

Rachel Nuwer

This marks the seventh year that Dance Your Ph.D. —a quirky contest that encourages doctoral candidates to creatively interpret their dissertations by dance—has inspired aspiring astrophysicists, chemists and ecologists to put their research to song, ScienceNOW reports . Winners are broken down into four categories: biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences. Judges included MIT and Harvard professors, journalists, artists and more.

Without further ado, here are this year's winners—each of whom will receive a $500 cash prize and a trip to a screening at Stanford University.

Uma Nagendra from the University of Georgia took both the overall competition prize ($1,000 bonus!) and the prize for biology for her dance about how tornadoes affect Appalachian mountain ecosystems. 

Saioa Alvarez from the University of the Basque Country in Spain won in the chemistry category, with a video that explains the particulars of creating the perfect low-fat mayonnaise. 

Hans Rinderknecht's video about the processes involved in "inertial confinement fusion implosions on OMEGA and the NIF" won in the physics category. Rinderknecht hails from MIT.  

Finally, David Manzano from Complutense University of Madrid in Spain claimed the prize for the social sciences category, with a video that explores Spain's relationship with former colonies, including the Philippines, Marianas and the Caroline Islands. 

Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Rachel Nuwer | | READ MORE

Rachel Nuwer is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn.