These PhD students won a prize for rapping about molecular clusters on a rooftop
University of Helsinki graduate student Jakub Kubecka has won Science magazine’s annual “Dance your PhD” contest for his video Molecular Clusters, which he wrote and performed with fellow students Ivo Neefjes and Vitus Besel.
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Posted: Mar 04, 2021 6:06 PM ET | Last Updated: March 4
From left to right, Vitus Besel, Ivo Neefjes and Jakub Kubecka shoot the video for Molecular Clusters at the University of Helsinki. The video won Science magazine s annual Dance Your PhD award. (Faustine Cros )
Yes, the song by Finnish researcher Jakub Kubecka features ‘endearingly crude’ dance on a rooftop and the immortal line ‘I’m the first author, you’re just et al’
Creative physics rap on molecular clusters wins
Science s annual Dance your Ph.D. contest
Competition also awards new prize for dance about COVID-19
American Association for the Advancement of Science
The newest overall winner of
Science s annual Dance your Ph.D. contest, now sponsored by the artificial intelligence company Primer, is a Finnish researcher studying atmospheric molecular clusters. With the help of several friends, Jakub Kubecka brought his studies to life with trash-talking rap lyrics ( I m the first author, you re just et al. ) endearingly crude dance moves, computer animation and drone video footage. To prepare for recording the lyrics, I was running with headphones playing the music at least 30 times per day for the whole month to get it into my blood. I think that I even dreamed about it. Kubecka recalls. Throughout the whole process, we always stayed close to our main goal of showing non-scientific muggles that science can be fun, si