Control

How?

This is our methods section. This page is a journal written by Kevin Chen, who lead this project, that details how we started, some of the challenges, and how we solved them. I've highlighted the sections that are key for people interested in doing this themselves, that way you can skip through my other blabber if you want.

Inspiration:

The initial inspiration for this project came from two main things:

1. John Bohnanon's talk TEDxBrussels:
   • I had only heard a little bit about the Dance Your PhD Contest before watching this video. I thought that this video was incredible and right after watching it, this was already added to the "list of things that I'd like to do something in my life". Of course, at the same time I had to add "Get a PhD" to that list.
2. Emma Ware winning the social sciences category of DYPhD 2011:
   • I knew Emma through dancing with the KinetiQ Crew. I found out about this shortly after watching John Bohannon's talk and I was thrilled to hear that this was something that actually happened here at Queen's. So the whole thing just felt a lot closer. This confirmed it. I had to do something like this when I'm doing my PhD.

At this time, I was a volunteer with Queen's iGEM 2011 and we had just returned from the World Finals. Next came a dry period where I didn't really think much about the whole dance thing, and I was focused more on leading the QGEM executive.

It wasn't until I became the team manager for the summer research team that this had actually clicked in as something I might not have to wait till I get my PhD to do. I wrote to a number of our team members asking what their thoughts on this might have been and I expected there to be a few concerns, at least money and logistics wise, but they were all pretty supportive.

There are few key reasons why this suddenly sounded appealing to me, and maybe sounded appealing to a dancer:

• It's a unique opportunity and experience
• International exposure
• Funding and logistical basis through the QGEM team
• iGEM and synbio seem like they might be generally open to weird awesome stuff like this
• This is the perfect research setting (Would any professional level conference really find this appropriate and/or worth the effort?)
• Synbio research is awesome.
• Why not now?

The Summer

Now, the real work began. I started by contacting a number of different dancers, or others involved with dance about this idea. And, for the most part, I got very little response. This could have been for a number of reasons:

• No one actually thought this was a good idea
• Everyone was out of town for the summer or busy
• We weren't promoting this properly

Had we started contacting people before the summer started, we might have had better results. But, we pushed onwards.

The next two people I contacted both provided lots of help and inspiration.

1. John Bohannon:
   There were few things that Dr. Bohannon suggested.
   • Find a dancer that knows people in the dance community and will be able to lead the project. Maybe even hire this person as an artist in residence.
   • Make it fun, hilarious and incorporate other dance styles.
   Retrieved from "http://2012.igem.org/Team:Queens_Canada/SynthetiQ/how"