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Meet the winners of the 2025 Dance Your PhD contest
There are four broad categories—physics, chemistry, biology, and social science—liberally defined.
It's time again to honor the winners of the annual Dance Your PhD contest, where eager young scientists attempt to convey the concepts of their doctoral theses through dance. This year's overall winner is the University of Helsinki's Sulo Roukka, who researches chemesthesis, specifically how people experience different sensory food compounds like capsaicin (hot) or menthol (cool).
As we've reported previously, the Dance Your PhD contest was established in 2008 by science journalist John Bohannon, who is now a data scientist at South Park Commons. Bohannon told Slate in 2011 that he came up with the idea while trying to figure out how to get a group of stressed-out PhD students, who were in the middle of defending their theses, to let off a little steam. So he put together a dance party at Austria's Institute of Molecular Biotechnology, including a contest for whichever candidate could best explain their thesis topics through interpretive dance.
The contest was such a hit that Bohannon started getting emails asking when the next one would be—and Dance Your PhD has continued ever since. It's now in its 17th year. There are four broad categories: physics, chemistry, biology, and social science, with a fairly liberal interpretation of what topics fall under each. All category winners receive $750. Roukka won the chemistry category and, as the overall champion, will receive an additional $2,750.
