Dancing plant cells win international competition

Norbert Krause from the Graduate Academy at the University of Jena came up with the idea of taking part in the competition and motivated doctoral candidates to apply. "I've always thought the competition was great and realized that entries from German universities were rarely submitted. That's why producing the video was something close to my heart – even if it was a big challenge to shoot the video without extra resources in addition to the actual work."

Priya Reddy's doctoral thesis was selected among others for the production of the video and was produced jointly by the Graduate Academy and the University's Multimedia Centre in coordination with University Communications and Marketing. Reddy is researching the immune response of plants at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. ”Research is not just for researchers, but for everyone who is curious,” says the scientist, explaining her motivation. “I wanted to take part in ’Dance Your PhD’ because this way science has the potential to reach a wider audience.”

Anne Dünger, who also works at the Graduate Academy of the University of Jena, trained the choreography with the dancers on several rehearsal dates. ”It was important to me that Priya suggested her very own dance style for the video based on her experience in her dance group and that her dance group members were involved – this made it very easy to work out a simple choreography that everyone could take part in.” Gyulsen Yordanova Akkaya from the University's Multimedia Centre supervised the visual realization of the script and the post-production. “I didn't know Priya's research and was initially a bit at a loss as a scientific non-expert. But then everything came together piece by piece until we ended up with an understandable and lively video.”