Photo Credit: ScienceMag
food for creative making, doing, and thinking
In college, it seems as if there’s always something else you could be doing. For example, instead of reading this blog post, you could start reading that book you should be halfway done with by now or writing that paper that’s due in a few hours. Don’t write it yet, though! Hypothetically, what if you didn’t have to write it at all? What if, instead, you could dance it? Yes, I said “dance” it — as in, create an interpretive dance about polypeptides or Pride and Prejudice or pollution. Seven years ago, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Science sponsored the first ever “Dance Your Ph.D” Contest in which graduate students create dance videos interpreting their Ph.D theses. Students can enter videos into one of four categories — Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and the Social Sciences — in the hopes of winning a grand prize of $1000 and a free trip to Stanford University where the video would be screened in the spring. This year’s winner is Uma Nagendra, pursuing a Ph.D in plant biology, for her incredible circus-inspired video on plant soil feedbacks after severe tornado damage. If you want to see some of the other submissions for this year’s contest, click here.