Step Up: Russian Scientist Wins #DanceYourPhD Contest With Ballroom Chemistry

The ninth annual contest for the best dance "retelling" of doctoral dissertations was organized by Harvard biologist and science journalist John Bohannon. In accordance with the rules, the author of the thesis must participate in the dance. This year 12 videos competed for cash prizes: $500 for the best dance in each category and an additional $500 for the overall winner.

The Best of the Best

British bioengineer Jacob Brubert from the University of Cambridge took the main prize. In his dance, he told about his ordeals and failures in the development of artificial heart valves.

The video, which includes basketball, strange scenes with cows and bugs, as well as other bizarre things, impressed the jury most of all. Brubert and his associates who danced with him will receive $1,000 and an invitation to make a presentation about their research at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual conference in 2017.

Chemistry

In this category, Russian nominee Evgeny Sogorin was victorious. The young chemist from the Institute of Protein Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow showed what similarities there are between ball-room dances and assembly of proteins in the cells of our body.

In his "dance thesis," Evgeny explained why ribosomes don't usually entangle in RNA and DNA strands, don't collide with each other and don't "jam up" while translation initiation.

Biology

Carla Brown of the University of Glasgow became the laureate of the competition in the field of biological sciences. She focused one of the great problems of modern science: the genetic spread of antibiotic resistance.

Social Scienses

The best dance movie in this category was created by Margaret Danilovich from Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Together with her colleagues she proposed a solution to the problem of low physical activity among aging populations, which today is associated with increased mortality from heart disease and blood vessels, obesity and increased bone fragility.

People's Choice

In the people's choice category the winner of was chosen by Internet users. The award went to Belgian molecular biologist Emmanuelle Alaluf, who performed a proper ballet about the war between immune system and cancer cells in bone marrow.