The 2009 AAAS/Science dance contest winners are announced

The dances are "ingenious and humbling," says Giulio Superti-Furga, director of the Center for Molecular Medicine in Vienna, Austria, and one of the judges.

The contest was organized by Gonzo Scientist, a.k.a. Science Contributing Correspondent John Bohannon, and builds on the success of his earlier "Dance Your Ph.D." competition. "This was an experiment," says Bohannon. "What happens when you ask scientists to express their research with nothing but music and movement? The results prove that there is an incredibly diverse solution set to this problem."

The new contest, international in scope, was open to anyone who has or is pursuing a Ph.D. in any scientific field. Applicants were asked to make a video of their own Ph.D. dance and post it on YouTube. A panel of nine judges, consisting of the three winners of the last contest, three scientists at Harvard University, and the three artistic directors of the dance company Pilobolus, has now selected the four winners.

		VIDEO: Post-doc Miriam Sach participated in the 2009 AAAS/Science dance contest. She completed a PhD at University of Duesseldorf, Germany, in 2004. The PhD title was "Cerebral activation patterns induced by... Click here for more information.

These winning scientists will now work with professional choreographers to develop their published research into a full-scale dance that will debut at the AAAS Annual Meeting in Chicago in February 2009.