Dance Your PhD Winner 2014

The results are in, and the winner of the 7th annual Dance Your PhD competition is Uma Nagendra of the University of Georgia.

Nagendra's own home city of New Orleans, Louisiana, was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As the human residents put their lives back together, she became curious about how the natural world recovers from disasters. After she became a biology Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia in 2011, she realized that she could answer this question herself by gathering data out in the field. But destructive events like Hurricane Katrina are rare on the timescale of a Ph.D. So Nagendra focused on a natural disaster that occurs far more frequently and does more localized damage: tornadoes.

Negendra is not only a scientist -she’s also a circus aerialist, so she recruited her circus friends to perform with her in the video that explains her dissertation. You might say she had a leg up in that department! You can see all twelve finalists in this year's competition here. (via Buzzfeed)