The biological relationships between seeds and soil organisms may not be the sexiest of topics, but that didn’t stop one doctoral candidate from turning it into an interpretive dance for the seventh international “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest.

Uma Nagendra, University of Georgia doctoral candidate in plant biology, won the competition with a piece called, “Plant-soil feedbacks after severe tornado damage.” The event is sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as Science magazine and HighWire Press, according to Science.

Nagendra is a circus performer in her off time, and she brought a few of her aerially skilled friends to help do a midair dance based on her research.

Nagendra was inspired by the events following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of her home city of New Orleans, Louisiana, in 2005, and wanted to see how the natural world recovers from disasters. But because events like Katrina are so rare, she needed to study more localized and frequent natural disasters, so she chose tornadoes.

She found that although tornadoes destroy vegetation, they do some good for trees, whose seedlings get relief from parasitic fungi, and they are able to flourish.

Nagendra received $1,000 for her win, and a trip to Stanford University to have her video screened.

Other winners included a student who danced about reduced-fat mayonnaise, another whose subject was nuclear fusion, a social sciences candidate who danced about colionalism, and a “dance of the drones.”

Nagendra said that the competition is important because scientists need to do a better job of communicating science to the layperson, and dance can help “illustrate complex ideas,” according to TIME.

Although Nagrendra doesn’t have any background in dance, she knew immediately she wanted to enter the competition when she heard about it a few years ago. She took trapeze classes and became hooked.

The other trapeze artists in the video are from her class, whereas those who play the soil pathogens on the ground were other grad students or friends who “thought it would be fun,” she said.