Dancer and physicist Sofia Papa is the 2026 winner of Science magazine's annual Dance Your PhD competition (previously at Neatorama). Her choreographed production number titled "Piezodance" illustrates piezoelectricity, the electric charge that accumulates in solid materials under stress. Papa began studying physics in high school because she liked how the science relates to art. She is now defending her dissertation “Piezoelectric Polymer Materials for Printed Wearable Ultrasound Transducers” at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies’s Biorobotics Institute in Pisa, Italy.
There are winners in the categories of physics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, and a new category this year for artificial intelligence research. I particularly enjoyed the winner in chemistry, Dina Haddad of the University of Cambridge, who rapped about a new method of detecting cancer cells in urine by using magnetic nanoparticles to capture DNA. It's a complex test, but would be so much easier on patients than biopsies. Her song and dance titled "Magnetic Flow" features pole dancers and toilets.
You can see the winners in all the categories at Science. -via Ars Technica
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