As It Occurs5:35Dance Your PhD winner channels his internal Kylie Minogue to elucidate meals science
After Sulo Roukka completed defending his PhD in “the same old approach,” he did not fairly know what to do with himself. So he dressed up like a chili pepper and made a dance video about it.
The College of Helsinki meals scientist is that this 12 months’s winner of Science journal’s annual Dance Your PhD contest, which has lecturers ditch their lab coats for latex to elucidate their complicated dissertations with motion and track.
“After the PhD defence, I felt a bit empty. After which this concept bought in my thoughts, like, let’s do that,” Roukka instructed As It Occurs host Nil Köksal.
“I consider that it is an attention-grabbing mixture of science meets the dance.”
WATCH | This 12 months’s profitable Dance Your PhD entry:
Roukka’s PhD is named “Insights into oral chemesthetic perception: A focus on food-related behaviour.” In laymen’s phrases, he research how totally different folks react to the chemical compounds that make meals really feel sizzling, cool or acidic.
“I am inquisitive about how we understand and expertise meals by means of our senses,” he mentioned.
In his video, Roukka spits lyrics about what makes issues “sizzling sizzling sizzling” and “cool cool cool” as dancers in lab coats groove out in a laboratory crammed with chili peppers and mint leaves.
Later, the dancers, all from the coed theatre group Viikki-Speksi, take away their labcoats to disclose glowing disco outfits, whereas Roukka sports activities a sizzling crimson unitard courtesy of his pal and stylist Teemu Muurimäki
“He made me seem like crimson chilli pepper and I completely felt like Kylie Minogue within the Padam Padam video,” Roukka mentioned.
Requested whether or not he is a fan of the Australian pop star, Roukka replied: “Sure, after all. Like, who is not?”
Roukka received the general prize, in addition to within the chemistry class, incomes a $2,750 US ($3,804 Cdn) prize.
Priya Reddy from Friedrich Schiller College Jena in Germany, received within the biology class for her video that uses theatric, interpretive dance to explain plant vaccination.
Arfor Houwman of the College of Innsbruck in Austria took dwelling the physics prize for his space-infused electronic music video about laser cooling.
And Manisha Biswas of Humboldt College of Berlin received the social sciences class for her video that uses synchronized movement to discover the evolutionary and cultural benefits of, effectively, synchronized motion.
WATCH | Dance Your PhD class winners:
John Bohannon, a former Science correspondent-turned-data scientist who began the competition in 2008 and continues to supervise it, famous this 12 months’s opponents skewed extra European than earlier years.
“This 12 months, American scientists didn’t appear to be within the temper to bounce,” he said in a press release. “Fortunate for the world, Europe’s scientists have doubled their creativity and enthusiasm.”
‘Deliver peace to the dinner desk’
Roukka says he was thrilled to have a chance to share his analysis, which he says has implications exterior the meals lab. In his thesis, he discovered that chemical compounds in meals do not have an effect on everybody the identical approach.
“Persons are totally different, and there are particular person variations. And I believe these type of particular person variations in sensitivity can clarify our meals experiences,” he mentioned.
“We have to perceive our particular person variations to get a greater understanding of one another. And I consider by doing so we are able to convey peace to the dinner desk, and past.”
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