Ph.D. Student’s Interpretive Dance of Her Tornado Research Wins Contest, Also Wins the Internet

The “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest, sponsored by Science journal publisher AAAS, tasks students with expressing their research through, well, dance. This year’s winner was biologist Uma Nagendra, who just happens to have a leg—and several other limbs—up on the rest of the competition with her double life as a circus aerialist.

Nagendra, of New Orleans, was inspired by hurricane Katrina to research the effects of natural disasters on the ecosystem, and she uncovered that in the case of tornadoes, there may actually be positive ecological effects.

The rest of the finalists have been posted for your viewing pleasure, so here are some of the highlights:

A music video about mayonnaise that could easily be the next “What Does the Fox Say” from Saioa Alvarez in the chemistry category.

Drones doing the tango from Venanzio Cichella in physics.

Another one from Jenna Kloosterman in physics about star formation, because space is amazing.

And the “discovery” of the Pacific from social sciences.

(via io9)

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