July 14, 2011

Winners of the Inaugural Science Online Film Festival

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Back in January 2011, Joanne and I hosted our first film festival at the notoriously popular ‘Science Online’ conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. Our entries spanned a wide variety of topics, from epigenetics to particle physics, biology and engineering. We narrowed the field to a total of 12 videos for our final showcase, and from there we did a peoples choice vote. Our winners got some rather excellent prizes including a grand prize haul of an orignial print by Glendon Mellow, one of the co-curators of the new Scientific American blog ‘Symbiartic’.

We’ll be putting out the call later this year for entries to our next film festival in 2012 – so stay tuned! For now, here are the top three people’s choice winners from Science Online 2011.

Grand Prize Winner - Bill Hammack, the 'Engineer Guy' gets a little down and dirty with his photocopier. You'll be giggling your way through this video before you realize that you're actually learning a lot about the mechanics behind the beast.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ5ghlTdF9k&feature=player_embedded#at=11

First Runner Up - Kate McAlpine, with her 'Large Hadron Rap'. It's no wonder that this video has amassed almost seven million views. Kate's rap lyrics are so intricate and spot on, not to mention that the tune is catchy - I still find myself singing it in my head from time to time - and it's about particle physics!!

Second Runner Up - Neil Losin's video about the research of Dr. Kristin Aquilino shows off his rather excellent skills as a scientific cinematographer. We'll be featuring more of Neil's work in an upcoming post...

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