ASU scientists participate in scientific stand-up show

Scientific Stand-Up Show is a unique format of informal scientific events and is quite new for Barnaul. In the course of the show five scientists represent different science areas and share relevant ideas and research results in a simple and entertaining manner. Such unusual approach to science allows bringing together a lot of people. Every guest does not only have an opportunity to learn new information and listen to the performances, but also communicate with the scientists personally.

On 26 March the scientists decided to tell the unprepared audience how to make zombie apocalypse, if cats have hangovers, what cosmonauts should be afraid of, how to print a house and why biologists like studying parasites.
ASU was represented by student Julia Medvedeva and assistant professor Dmitry N. Sherbakov.

Julia Medvedeva is a Faculty of Biology student. She made an interesting and entertaining lecture and captured the third place at the show.

“Scientific stand-up show is new for our city. The majority of people assume scientists to be dull people obsessed with their work. The scientists are surely obsessed, but they are far from being dull. So we tried to prove this at the stand-up show in a “brutal” Irish pub. Performing in front of the audience is a stress for anyone. Although, the audience there was distinct and welcomed us warmly,” says Julia Medvedeva.

Another participant from ASU was assistant professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry Dmitry N. Sherbakov. He was considered to be the best performer of the show and took the first place.

For the show Dmitry N. Sherbakov prepared a sketch titled “Everything you wanted to know about zombie apocalypse but were afraid to ask, or how we hybridized HIV-1 and Ebola virus”, brought security in black sunglasses with him and put on a fancy suit, which added a special touch to his performance.

“In my presentation I tried to explain the process of vaccine making in a simple language. I told the audience about the progressive ways of vaccine creation, new approaches that are being intensively developed. In the foreseeable future it will allow us to create the vaccines against the diseases, which we have been fighting for a long time already, like HIV, Ebola, Zika viruses. The new approaches are based on understanding of viruses’ molecular biology. We need to know how the processes in the viruses’ cells are organized and how virus interacts with an organism. On the basis of this information we can remove the pathogenic agents from the virus and conduct its reshaping. In other words, if we remove everything bad from the virus and leave its necessary features, we can create a vaccine,” explains Dmitry N. Sherbakov.

The scientist also assured the audience that there was no need to worry about zombie apocalypse. No such thing will happen, because the virologists occasionally postpone the apocalypse by developing new vaccines.

In the scientists’ opinion, the scientific lectures of such format should be organized more often. Science needs popularization, especially among the youth. As many people as possible must understand that science is not some distant and hard to understand thing, it is our environment, it surrounds us and we face it everywhere.