Dance your PhD contest is an idea of the Gonzo Scientist, the alter ego of John Bohannon. John Bohannon is a biologist, science journalist and dancer, based at Harvard University. He is the owner of the Gonzolabs and the protagonist of a regular column in Science magazine. He writes also for Discover Magazine and Wired Magazine.

The GonzoLabs are a virtual research institution where scientists play with art and artists play with science. The dance experiment began back in October 2008 with a challenge to scientists to interpret their Ph.D. theses in dance form, capture the dances on video, and upload them onto YouTube. Six weeks later, a panel of expert judges chose four winners, coming from Australia, Germany, Canada, and the United States. Each scientist was paired with a choreographer who studied in depth a peer-reviewed research article of the scientist. A few months later a four-part dance called THIS IS SCIENCE was performed in front of an audience in Chicago, Illinois, during the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) annual meeting.

Here are the results :

Scientist	Choreographer	Dance Video
Sue Lynn Lau	Jenn Liang Chaboud
Miriam Britt Sach	Christopher M. McCray
Vince J. LiCata	Helena Reynolds
Markita Landry	Chloe Jensen

The dance contest was repeated in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

John Bohannon is also one of the creators of the Science Hall of Fame (see former post).