[Tango] winners of "Dance your Ph.D."

[Bill Gaupp]

[ Excerpts from Science Magazine ]

    Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist [gonzolabs.org/dance] challenged
    researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in
    dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube
    (Science, 10 October, p. 186). 

    The winner of the Popular Choice category was determined by the number
    of views accumulated by each YouTube video between the time it went
    online and the contest deadline.  Markita Landry, a half-Bolivian,
    half-French Canadian physics Ph.D. student at the University of
    Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, was the clear winner with 14,138 views;
    views for the rest ranged from 10,000 to fewer than 100 for the
    last-minute entries.  (It didn't hurt that Landry was the first to
    enter the contest.)

    Landry used a tango to convey her thesis, "Single Molecule Measurements
    of Protelomerase TelK-DNA Complexes."  She is trying to understand
    how a protein called TelK bends DNA into hairpin loops.  The mechanism
    makes for beautiful dance, with Landry bending like pliable DNA
    in her partner's arms.


Full story plus links to videos on YouTube available from:

  http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/1120/2

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