A food chemist from the University of Helsinki has won the 17th Dance your PhD contest with choreography that explores the unique sensations experienced when eating certain foods, such as fiery capsaicin found in chillis and the tingly cool of menthol in mint.
During the prize-worthy dance, Sulo Roukka, who was awarded a total of $2750 (£2070) for winning both the overall and chemistry category, transforms from a lab coat-clad scientist writing on a whiteboard to a red coat-tailed performer twirling and prancing among sequinned backing dancers and flashing lights. The music video also features a cameo by his PhD supervisor, food chemist Mari Sandell.
‘I got to experience a Kylie Minogue fantasy,’ Roukka, who studies how chemesthesis – sensations caused by the activation of receptors by chemicals – influences the human experience while eating particular foods, told Science.
As well as calling on friends to help with the music video, he enlisted dancers from one of the university’s musical theatre groups but said his cousin’s six-year-old daughter was upset to not have been included. ‘If I ever do another PhD, I will make sure she’s the first one to join for the next Dance Your PhD music video,’ he added.
The Dance Your PhD competition is run by Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and asks postgraduate students to explain their thesis through interpretive dance. The competition awards the best entries in biology, chemistry, physics and social sciences.
This year, there was also a special AI/quantum prize, for which the dance did not need to be based on a PhD thesis. The winner of this was Arfor Houwman at the University of Innsbruck, for his 1980s dance music-inspired video on laser cooling of ultracold atoms. Each category winner received $750 with Roukka receiving an extra $2000 as the overall winner.
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