As It Happens5:35Dance Your PhD winner channels his inside Kylie Minogue to elucidate meals science
After Sulo Roukka completed defending his PhD in “the standard method,” 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 yr’s winner of Science journal’s annual Dance Your PhD contest, which has teachers ditch their lab coats for latex to elucidate their advanced dissertations with motion and track.
“After the PhD defence, I felt a bit empty. After which this concept received in my thoughts, like, let’s do that,” Roukka advised As It Occurs host Nil Köksal.
“I imagine that it is an fascinating mixture of science meets the dance.”
WATCH | This yr’s profitable Dance Your PhD entry:
Roukka’s PhD is named “Insights into oral chemesthetic notion: A give attention to food-related behaviour.” In laymen’s phrases, he research how totally different individuals react to the chemical compounds that make meals really feel sizzling, cool or acidic.
“I am interested by how we understand and expertise meals by our senses,” he stated.
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 stuffed with chili peppers and mint leaves.
Later, the dancers, all from the scholar theatre group Viikki-Speksi, take away their labcoats to disclose glowing disco outfits, whereas Roukka sports activities a sizzling pink unitard courtesy of his good friend and stylist Teemu Muurimäki
“He made me appear to be pink chilli pepper and I completely felt like Kylie Minogue within the Padam Padam video,” Roukka stated.
Requested whether or not he is a fan of the Australian pop star, Roukka replied: “Sure, after all. Like, who is not?”
Roukka Solicked Assist from His Associates and Campus Group, Together with Dancers from the Pupil Theater Group Viikki Spee. (Ilkka Loikkanen)
Roukka gained 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, gained within the biology class for her video that makes use of theatric, interpretive dance to elucidate plant vaccination.
Arfor Houwman of the College of Innsbruck in Austria took residence the physics prize for his space-infused digital music video about laser cooling.
And Manisha Biswas of Humboldt College of Berlin gained the social sciences class for her video that makes use of synchronized motion to discover the evolutionary and cultural benefits of, nicely, 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 yr’s opponents skewed extra European than earlier years.
“This yr, American scientists didn’t appear to be within the temper to bounce,” he stated in a press launch. “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 outdoors the meals lab. In his thesis, he discovered that chemical compounds in meals do not have an effect on everybody the identical method.
“Persons are totally different, and there are particular person variations. And I feel these form of particular person variations in sensitivity can clarify our meals experiences,” he stated.
“We have to perceive our particular person variations to get a greater understanding of one another. And I imagine by doing so we are able to deliver peace to the dinner desk, and past.”
