dance your phd winner 2022

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Astrophysics student Xiaohan Wu uses a choreographed ballet dance to explain the physics behind the early universe.

Photo by Ana Maria Delgado

Turning photons into pirouettes

Nadia Whitehead

CfA Communications

Xiaohan Wu explains the physics behind photons in the early universe and wins ‘Dance Your Ph.D.’ competition

En pointe and in a poufy pink tutu, Xiaohan Wu gracefully leaps across the marled dance floor. She stoops, collects an intricate hand fan and proceeds to twirl, delicately waving the fan back and forth as she spins.

But this is not a recital and Wu is no dance student. She’s a graduate astronomy student who has created an interpretative dance explaining her research on the early universe — and she’s clearly got chops.

On Thursday, Wu was named the winner of the physics category of “ Dance Your Ph.D .,” an international competition hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Science magazine. The competition challenges graduate students and those with Ph.D.s to turn their complex doctoral theses into dances that the general public can understand.

The contest, now in its 14th year, is divided into four categories: biology, chemistry, physics, and social sciences, and is judged by a panel of dancers, scientists, and artists who watch a recording of the dance.

Wu, who is set to graduate this May, says she participated in the competition because it is her final year at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J_9_m4Dgkk

“I just felt like I should do this video as a tribute to astronomy and as a proper end to my Ph.D.,” she said.

During her time at the Center for Astrophysics, Wu studied the epoch of reionization, a period about 12 billion years ago when the first stars and galaxies began to form, lighting up the utterly dark universe.

In her choreographed dance, Wu plays one of many photons — or particles of light — that are emitted from the first star. As the photons begin to travel outwards from the star, they encounter a thick gas that contains neutral hydrogen atoms. These atoms act as a barrier, preventing the light from traveling further outwards.

But when a photon and hydrogen atom eventually interact — conveyed by Wu picking up a hand fan and twirling with it in the dance — the hydrogen atom loses an electron and becomes positively charged or ionized.

This small dance between the two particles is transformational for the early universe. Time after time, newly emitted photons from newly formed stars interact with neutral hydrogen atoms, allowing light to escape farther and travel freely throughout the universe.

The result is a universe that is not cold, dark, and neutral, but bright, ionized and hot.

The judges of “Dance Your Ph.D.” say this year’s competition winners used movement creatively to clearly explain their research.

“The science enhances the dance, and the dance enhances the science,” said judge Emily Kent from the dance company Pilobolus.

Wu, who loves ballet as much as she loves astronomy, learned to dance when she was very little but took a lengthy hiatus and only picked it up again a few years ago.

“I think it’s just beautiful and I love seeing myself improve,” she says.

After graduating in May, Wu will join the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics as a postdoctoral researcher — and she plans to continue dancing.

“It happens to every amateur ballet dancer I’ve met,” she says. “Once you get into this business and start taking it seriously, there’s no way out and you just take it more seriously over time.”

Wu received assistance with choreography, props, and filming from flamenco dancer and fellow astronomy student Ana Maria Delgado, who jumped at the chance to help.

“Since beginning my Ph.D., I get very few opportunities to make art,” Delgado says. “I, too, have danced most of my life and the truth is, we  need  to make art.”

The two spent about two weeks choreographing the dance and storyline, practicing in the CfA’s Phillips Auditorium in early January. A week later, they knocked out the filming in one afternoon.

“We came up with a very ambitious piece that Xiaohan worked so hard on and it came out beautifully,” Delgado says. “This really is a labor of love and she deserves this prize!”

As winner of the physics category, Wu will receive a prize of $750.

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ANU scientist wins global 'Dance Your PhD' competition

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There are a raft of awards that any serious research scientist covets such as a Nobel Prize or the Australian Museum Eureka Prize. But a PhD graduate from the ANU has hopped away with a prestigious international award.

Dr Weliton Menário Costa, who goes by WELI, is the winner of Dance Your PhD awarded for communicating his academic research on behaviour through song and dance.

Guest: WELI ( Dr Weliton Menário Costa), global winner of the 2024 Dance Your PhD contest

RN Breakfast, 28th February 2024

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Watch This Year’s ‘Dance Your PhD’ Contest Winner, a Musical Celebration of Kangaroo Behavior

“Kangaroo Time” took home the competition’s overall prize, while interpretive dances on early life adversity, circadian rhythms and streambank erosion were also honored

Christian Thorsberg

Daily Correspondent

An Australian landscape filled with kangaroos, drag queens, ballerinas and twerking may sound like the onset of a fever dream or a carnival—but for Weliton Menário Costa , a behavioral ecologist at Australian National University who goes by Weli, it was the perfect way to create and share a song about marsupial behavior.

“ Kangaroo Time ,” a four-minute music video about Weli’s years studying eastern gray kangaroos in Victoria, is as fun as it is informative—one of the reasons why it was named the overall winner of this year’s “ Dance Your PhD ” competition.

“It’s super incredible,” Weli tells the Guardian ’s Kelly Burke. “To win an international science competition, it’s like Eurovision—except we all have PhDs.”

Though it might sound unreal, the dancing contest for scientists is “ totally serious .” Weli’s winning video explains his thesis research, “ Personality, Social Environment and Maternal-Level Effects: Insights from a Wild Kangaroo Population .” In his work, Weli found that kangaroos develop their personalities early in life , create social groups and dynamics just as humans do and are influenced to act in similar ways as their parents and siblings. As a queer immigrant to Australia, he tells the Guardian that he can relate to how kangaroos modify their behavior in different groups.

“Differences lead to diversity,” he concludes in “Kangaroo Time.” “It exists within any given species; it is just natural.”

The video’s message resonated with the judges, both scientifically and artfully. “There was a sense of surprise and delight in [‘Kangaroo Time’],” judge Alexa Meade tells Science ’s Sean Cummings. “You could tell they were having fun through the process, that it wasn’t this labored, stressful experience.”

The origins of the “Dance Your PhD” competition can be traced to New Year’s Eve in 2006, when John Bohannon —a microbiologist and director of science at artificial intelligence company Primer—hosted a dance party for his colleagues and friends. The only problem: hardly anyone wanted to boogie.

“It’s very hard to get anyone to dance, particularly scientists,” Bohannon told NPR ’s Barry Gordemer in 2021. “Their parties are not on the dancey side.”

So, like any scientist, he designed an experiment—or, in this case, a dance contest—based on a hypothesis. “One thing you can count on with scientists is they’re competitive and they have a sense of humor about their work, so I thought, let’s just put it all together,” he said to NPR.

The first official contest took place in 2008, and it has been organized every year since by Science magazine and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. For 16 years the competition has made its enduring pitch to scientists globally: “Don’t you wish you lived in a world where you could just ask people to pull out their phones to watch an online video explaining your PhD research through interpretive dance?”

Evidently, many do—dozens of videos each year are submitted to the contest, in four categories of biology, chemistry, physics and social science. Science communication skills are key to a successful video, striking a balance between creativity and sharing new findings.

“It’s actually a real challenge, communicating research results and making a clear link between science and the performing arts,” Weli tells the Guardian .

Weli took home the overall winner’s purse of $2,000, in addition to his $750 social science category prize. The three other winning videos this year focused on how adversity in early life can affect how genes work ( Siena Dumas Ang , Princeton University), treating the loss of neurons by targeting a protein involved with the circadian rhythm ( Xuebing Zhang , City University of Hong Kong) and streambank erosion ( Layla El-Khoury , North Carolina State University). In the social science category, the runner-up behind the kangaroos was a video on the invasive browntail moth  in Maine.

Past overall winners have included atmospheric scientists from the University of Helsinki in Finland rapping about cloud formations ; a swing dance about superconductivity from a researcher at the University of Victoria in Canada; and a stylized music video about yeast cells from a researcher at Vilnius University in Lithuania.

For Weli, one of his most meaningful breakthroughs was with his grandmother, who didn’t quite understand his thesis until recently.

“Once I released ‘Kangaroo Time,’ she was like, ‘That’s my grandson! I get it now!’” he tells Science .

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Christian Thorsberg is an environmental writer and photographer from Chicago. His work, which often centers on freshwater issues, climate change and subsistence, has appeared in Circle of Blue , Sierra  magazine, Discover  magazine and Alaska Sporting Journal .

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Professional troupe takes Dance Your PhD contest to another level

2022 winner brews up a fungi-based love story with a lot of help from his friends.

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Yeast cells can double their population every 100 minutes, but making them the stars of an award-winning music video was a process 20 years in the making. 

The winner of this year’s Dance Your PhD competition, organised annually by Science magazine, has a different feel to its predecessors. Charmingly amateurish production often added to the humour. When things stayed serious, the dancing was an illustration, a flailing diagram. 

Povilas Šimonis, the overall winner for 2022, found out about the oddball event through his theatrical mentor, who said they could make a “serious product, not some amateur production but a really beautiful result”. 

His secret? Being an active participant in theatre for 20 years and doing dance and physical theatre for the past nine. 

“Most of my friends are artists,” said Dr Šimonis, a researcher at Lithuania’s Center for Physical Sciences and Technology and Vilnius University . That meant his director, cast and crew worked without their usual pay. “Even the costume designers and the stage decorators, everyone was professional.” 

The starring all-female dance troupe brandish baguettes: gifts for a distant scientist who appears, rapping, on a television screen. 

“When we were creating the narrative in the beginning I was the main yeast, but in the end we decided I would be a scientist who looks to the yeast, sort of like God or an idol from above.” 

The role of lead yeast went instead to Adelina Skalandytė, a professional actor and Dr Šimonis’ fiancée. He said that the switch was made more apt because yeast is a feminine word in Lithuanian.  

Ms Skalandytė’s character divides asexually to produce the rest of her troupe, who are eventually killed by electric pulses. “It's a tragic story but I think it’s easier to follow”, said Dr Šimonis. 

“Since lyrics, music and video were created by different people and specifically for this project, their forms were constantly evolving; it took a lot of iterations and effort to form a solid, cohesive backbone before filming,” he said.  

“Great dance creates an atmosphere or a world,” said Dance Your PhD judge Matt Kent, from the dance company Pilobolus. “That’s exactly what the winner did.”  

The contest, devised by former Science magazine correspondent John Bohannon, challenges scientists at all levels to explain their research through dance. Finalists are picked from physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences. 

Dr Šimonis, who pulled together a budget of €1,700 (£1,420) from his institution and lab, said that the prize money would be ploughed into another artistic interpretation of science. “It makes sense to use it as a spark to start something beautiful and purposeful”. 

He finished his PhD a year ago and is now actively looking for a postdoctoral position, with plans to keep his artistic activities as a hobby.

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‘Joyful madness’: ANU scientist wins global prize for ‘dancing his PhD’ about kangaroos

Four-minute video features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer and a bunch of friends from Canberra

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The former Canberra scientist Dr Weliton Menário Costa, who now goes by the name Weli, said it “felt like winning Eurovision” when he learned he had won the global “Dance Your PhD” competition, for his quirky interpretive take on kangaroo behaviour.

His four-minute video titled Kangaroo Time features drag queens, twerking, ballerinas, a classical Indian dancer, and a bunch of friends Weli acquired from his time studying at the Australian National University.

The video collected the top prize awarded annually by the American Association for the Advancement of Science , Science magazine, and San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company Primer.ai.

The competition encourages scientists to explain complex research to the wider public through dance, music and humour, and attracts dozens of entries from around the world each year.

“It’s super incredible,” Weli told the Guardian on Tuesday. “To win an international science competition, it’s like Eurovision – except we all have PhDs.

“It’s actually a real challenge, communicating research results and making a clear link between science and the performing arts. In Eurovision, you can do anything you want.”

Kangaroo Time narrowly beat an entry from the University of Maine, in which a second-year ecology and environmental science PhD student used the music of Camille Saint-Saëns’s Danse Macabre to convey her research on the invasive browntail moth.

Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup

Weli collected more than A$4,000 (US$2,750), winning the overall prize and the social sciences prize; it was the fourth time an Australian entry had won in the competition’s 17-year history.

In 2009, a University of Sydney entry won for a dance about the use of vitamin D to protect against diabetes. Two years later, a University of Western Australia entry won for a video about why orthopaedic implants fail; and the following year, a University of Sydney entry won once again for a work explaining the “evolution of nanostructural architecture in 7000 series aluminium alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation”.

Weli based his entry on his four-year PhD study on animal behaviour, in a video Science magazine described as “joyful madness”. The judging panel of scientists, artists and dancers praised Kangaroo Time for its “sense of surprise and delight” and its accessible explanation of the science of marsupial group dynamics.

Using a remote-controlled car, the ANU graduate studied the behavioural differences and complex personalities of a group of more than 300 wild eastern grey kangaroos in Victoria.

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He found that like humans, kangaroos’ personalities develop in early life and often mirror the personalities of their parents and siblings; he found they take social cues from the group dynamic, and form social circles like humans too.

His conclusion: “Difference leads to diversity. It exists within any given species, it is just natural.”

The Brazilian-born biologist, who gained a scholarship from ANU in 2017, said he drew on his South American roots and a fascination with Australia’s unique fauna to write, produce and perform in the work.

A queer immigrant from a developing country, Weli said he could relate to how the kangaroos modified their behaviour to conform to the wider group.

“I come from a very humble family, a small town where most of the people are not educated,” he said, of his conservative upbringing. “When I came to Australia I came out to my family … in Kangaroo Time I celebrate diversity in my beautiful Canberra community that [mirrors] kangaroo behaviour.”

Since completing his PhD in Canberra in 2021, Weli has abandoned his academic science career and moved his home base to Sydney, where he is seeking to establish himself as a singer-songwriter.

His first EP – Yours Academically, Dr Weli – will be out 1 March.

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Astrophysics Student Wins International 'Dance Your PhD' Competition

Donning pointe shoes and a poufy pink tutu, Xiaohan Wu gracefully leaps across the marled dance floor. She stoops, collects an intricate hand fan and proceeds to twirl, delicately waving the fan back and forth as she spins.

But this is not a recital and Wu is no dance student. She's a graduate astronomy student who has created  an interpretative dance explaining her research on the early universe  — and she's clearly got chops.

On Thursday, Wu was named the winner of the physics category of ' Dance Your PhD ,' an international competition hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Science magazine. The competition challenges graduate students and those with PhDs to turn their complex doctoral theses into dances that the general public can understand.

The contest, now in its 14th year, is divided into four categories: biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences, and is judged by a panel of dancers, scientists and artists who watch a recording of the dance.

Wu, who is set to graduate this May, says she participated in the competition because it is her final year at the  Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian .

"I just felt like I should do this video as a tribute to astronomy and as a proper end to my PhD," she explains.

During her time at the Center for Astrophysics, Wu studied the epoch of reionization, a period about 12 billion years ago when the first stars and galaxies began to form, lighting up the utterly dark universe.

In her choreographed dance, Wu plays one of many photons — or particles of light — that are emitted from the first star. As the photons begin to travel outwards from the star, they encounter a thick gas that contains neutral hydrogen atoms. These atoms act as a barrier, preventing the light from traveling further outwards.

But when a photon and hydrogen atom eventually interact — conveyed by Wu picking up a hand fan and twirling with it in the dance — the hydrogen atom loses an electron and becomes positively charged or ionized.

This small dance between the two particles is transformational for the early universe. Time after time, newly emitted photons from newly formed stars interact with neutral hydrogen atoms, allowing light to escape further and travel freely throughout the universe.

The result is a universe that is not cold, dark and neutral, but bright, ionized and hot.

The judges of 'Dance Your PhD' say this year's competition winners used movement creatively to clearly explain their research.

"The science enhances the dance, and the dance enhances the science," explains judge Emily Kent from the dance company Pilobolus.

Wu, who loves ballet as much as she loves astronomy, learned to dance when she was very little but took a lengthy hiatus and only picked it up again a few years ago.

"I think it's just beautiful and I love seeing myself improve," she says.

After graduating in May, Wu will join the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics as a postdoctoral researcher — and she plans to continue dancing.

"It happens to every amateur ballet dancer I've met,” she says. "Once you get into this business and start taking it seriously, there's no way out and you just take it more seriously over time."

Wu received assistance with choreography, props and filming from flamenco dancer and fellow astronomy student Ana Maria Delgado who jumped at the chance to help.

"Since beginning my PhD, I get very few opportunities to make art," Delgado says. "I, too, have danced most of my life and the truth is, we need to make art."

The two spent about two weeks choreographing the dance and storyline, practicing in the CfA's Phillips Auditorium in early January. A week later, they knocked out the filming in one afternoon.

"We came up with a very ambitious piece that Xiaohan worked so hard on and it came out beautifully," Delgado says. "This really is a labor of love and she deserves this prize!"

As winner of the physics category, Wu will receive a prize of $750.

https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/astrophysics-student-wins-international-dance-your-phd-competition

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Australian Scientist Wins ‘Dance Your Ph.D’ Contest

A new “Dance Your PhD” contest winner has been announced, and it involves juggling, shuffling bodies and burlesque-style dancing behind rainbow-colored umbrellas.

This year’s winner is Peter Liddicoat , a materials scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia. His thesis — the inspiration for his dance — is called “Evolution of nanostructural architecture in 7000 series aluminium alloys during strengthening by age-hardening and severe plastic deformation.”

The contest was conceived by molecular biologist-turned-science journalist John Bohannon five years ago as a way to encourage scientists to communicate more fluently and playfully about their PhD research. (See the story we did on the contest last year.)

The years since have seen an outpouring of submissions — proof again that scientists are a goofy and creative tribe. Past contest winners pared the 36 dances submitted down to 12 finalists , which were scored by a panel of judges that included scientists, educators, and dancers, Bohannon writes. More on the contest here .

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'Kangaroo Time' wins the annual Dance Your PhD contest in Australia

A former academic at Australia National University won the contest for his musical number about the behaviors of kangaroos. Scientists around the world relay their research through interpretive dance.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Some very serious people got a chance to express themselves in Australia.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "KANGAROO TIME")

WELITON MENARIO COSTA: (Singing) Kanga, kangaroo, kanga, kangaroo...

INSKEEP: We're dancing here in the studios.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

"Kangaroo Time" was this year's overall winner of the annual Dance Your PhD contest. Scientists from around the world relay their research through interpretive dance.

COSTA: (Singing) Hope you don't mind, some things I learned from my kanga-time (ph)...

INSKEEP: The winner was Weliton Menario Costa, who wrote and sang this song when he was a PhD candidate at Australian National University.

COSTA: My PhD was on kangaroo behavior. So kangaroos do have personality. It means they do have this intrinsic tendencies of behaving in a particular way and that is different from the other.

MARTIN: The different behaviors Costa observed are expressed through samba, ballet, Brazilian capoeira, salsa and, of course, twerking.

INSKEEP: OK.

MARTIN: Some kangaroos seem to change their personalities to fit in.

COSTA: When they move across different groups, and kangaroos do that a lot, as they do so, they do adjust their behavior to the behavior of other individuals in the group.

INSKEEP: Costa expressed that with an elaborately produced video. Sometimes you see kangaroos on a grassy plain, and sometimes you see the scientist on that plane dancing with other people who are dressed in different ways.

COSTA: I'm also a part of the queer community, and having drag queens was a very important aspect that I wanted to bring. Basically anyone seeing that video will see diversity, and that's how you should see any workspace.

MARTIN: And Costa loves music so much that he's actually left academia to be a musician full time.

INSKEEP: I'm just trying to think about different dances we could try, Michel, to express different news stories.

MARTIN: It would have flow.

INSKEEP: Square dancing? We'll flow.

MARTIN: Flow.

INSKEEP: We'll just kind of flow.

MARTIN: We'll just interpret.

INSKEEP: We'll just keep going.

MARTIN: We just keep going.

INSKEEP: Keep going.

Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

• The Inventory

Here are All the Winners of This Year's Dance Your PhD Contest

Science and interpretive dance met once again this year, as PhD students around the world took to the stage to bring their research to vivid life in the annual Dance Your PhD contest.

Social scientist Florence Metz, a PhD student from the University of Bern in Switzerland, beat out 31 other teams to take the top prize for her choreographed interpretation of her thesis in water protection policy design, entitled, “Do policy networks matter to explain policy design?” (see above). Judges were charmed by how she represented different interest groups through different styles of dance (hip-hop, salsa, acro-yoga). She also won for her category, social science — the first time the field has taken the top prize in the contest’s eight-year history. As for the other category winners, John Bohannon writes in Science :

For biology, Pearl Lee brought her ballet skills to bear on her Ph.D. research on tropoelastin—the precursor protein that builds connective tissue—at the University of Sydney in Australia. For the winner of the physics prize, Merritt Moore, a Ph.D. student at the University of Oxford, in the United Kingdom, it was tango, which she used to explain her research on entangled photons. (Get it?) Perhaps the most elaborate of the dances, certainly in terms of costumes, came from the chemistry winner Jyaysi Desai, a Ph.D. student at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany. She used dance elements from Bollywood to capture her research on the molecular nets of DNA and protein that white blood cells cast into infection sites to trap bacteria.

Feast your eyes on the glories of merging science and movement in the videos below. You can also check out some of the past winners here .

Pearl Lee, Ph.D. student, University of Sydney, Australia: “Cellular interactions with tropoelastin.”

Chemistry (also Audience Favorite)

Jyaysi Desai, Ph.D. student, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany: “Molecular mechanisms involved in neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) formation.”

Merritt Moore, Ph.D. student, University of Oxford, United Kingdom: “Exploring multi-photon states for quantum information applications.”

[Via Science /AAAS ]