Turning brain research into an award-winning dance
What does it take to translate years of scientific research into a few minutes of movement? For Kate Kondrateva, PhD candidate at GROW, the answer turned out to be more complex than expected. Earlier this year, she won the Special AI Prize in the international Dance Your PhD competition for a performance inspired by her research on why the same brain scan can produce slightly different measurements depending on the scanner, and how AI can help make those results more reliable.
The dance contest brings together researchers from different disciplines, challenging them to explain their work through dance. What started as a creative side project became a process that forced her to rethink how to communicate science altogether. “I thought it would just be something fun,” she says. “But it quickly became much more serious than that.” Her research focuses on artificial intelligence and brain MRI scans, specifically on how reliable these measurements are. It is technical, data-driven work, not something that easily translates into choreography. “I had no idea how to begin,” she explains. “My first instinct was to explain everything literally.”
Finding a different language
That meant trying to act out scientific processes step by step, an approach that did not work. The turning point came when she started working with a choreographer. “She told me: you don’t have to show everything. You have to tell a story.” Instead of focusing on exact details, they shifted towards emotion and narrative. That required letting go of a large part of the scientific complexity. “Otherwise, it becomes impossible to follow,” she says.
Together, they translated abstract concepts, such as variation in brain measurements, into movement. The result was not a literal explanation, but a performance that captured the essence of her research. “It became something people could feel, not just understand.”
Rethinking impact
Alongside her PhD at GROW, she is also co-founder of a healthcare AI startup, where she works on applying AI in real-world settings. That experience made her more aware of the gap between research and practice. “In academia, you can work on something for years without anyone outside your field understanding it,” she says. “That can leave important work invisible to the very people it could eventually affect.”
Making science visible
The Dance Your PhD project offered a different approach. It allowed her to present her work in a way that is accessible to a broader audience, without losing its core message. Winning the competition was a milestone, but for her, the process itself was just as important. “It showed me that science doesn’t always have to be explained in the same way.”
Looking ahead, she hopes to keep connecting rigorous research with forms of communication that broader audiences can genuinely engage with. “I want my research to be useful, but also understandable,” she says.
Her research remains focused on making brain imaging analysis more reliable, but the way she communicates that has changed. “People don’t need to understand every technical detail,” she says. “But they should be able to understand why it matters.” And sometimes, that understanding starts not with data or words, but with movement.
Text: Fleur Habers
Watch the video of Kate here:
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