As the global COVID-19 pandemic rages on, plans for 2020 were forced to be postponed or canceled altogether. However, this was not enough to keep graduate students from around the world from dancing to their thesis research, submitting videos produced in adherence to local COVID restrictions.
Finnish graduate student Jabuk Kubecka, with the help of his friends Vitus Besel and Ivo Neefjes, won the 2020 Dance Your Ph.D. Contest with a rap-based dance on the physics of atmospheric molecular clusters.
Kubecka incorporated drone footage and computer animations, effectively beating 40 other contestants taking top honors in the Physics category.
History of Dance Your Ph.D. Contest
The contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon on his quest to figure out how de-stress a group of Ph.D. students in the middle of defending their thesis and let off some steam, according to Bohannon in a statement with Slate in 2011.
Hence, Bohannon put together a soiree at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, Austria that included a contest for whichever candidate that could best explain their thesis with interpretative dance.
The dance competition was originally sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Science Magazine but is now sponsored by AI company Primer where Bohannon is the director of science.
The contest was a success and grew popular and has continued to this day. In its 13th year, the dance competition has four broad categories: chemistry, biology, physics, and social sciences.
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The American Association for the Advancement of Science
Anyone who has dabbled in research, even for a school project, has seen or used resources from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. But what is the organization about?
The AAAS is the largest multidisciplinary scientific society and publisher of cutting-edge research in the world. With hundreds of individual members from more than 91 countries, the AAAS seeks to advance various fields of science including engineering and innovation to benefit the people of the world.
In 1848 the AAAS was formed in the US, marking the emergence of a national scientific community. While science has been a major part of the American scene since its early days, practitioners of the field were few and scattered across the globe.
AAAS was the first organization formed that vowed to promote the development of science and engineering at a national level representing the interests of all scientific disciplines.
In order to fulfill its goals, the AAAS works in expansive and interconnected projects that increase STEM diversity and provide policymakers with scientific information helping people think critically.
The AAAS has various focus areas such as Science diplomacy, science education, human rights, laws & ethics, and more.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science prides itself in inclusivity, with teachers, scientists, and science advocates encouraged to be a part of the largest multidisciplinary organization.
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