We’re calling a winner right now!

How would you summarize your research in a haiku?

We are happy to be launching The Crastina International Science Haiku Competition 2019 . This is your chance to unveil your talent for poetry. The challenge is to describe your research – alternatively your work or studies in the STEMM field – in the form of a haiku.

Examples from past competitors I

Autumn leaves fall
Into the cold stream
Aquatic life stirs

Saute G9a binding moeties,
Flavour with functional groups,
Eat to treat breast cancer.

Through computing cores,
Modeling our fragile hearts,
Cores of our bodies.

In deep-sea waters
Unseen coral gardens in peril
Make the unknown known

Rock trapped within ice.
In the darkness microbes creep,
Life always finds a way.

Eye-opening cure
What links soft & sight?
Silk surprisingly!

Breast cancer signals
Instruct pro-tumour stroma
A novel target

Children must be seen
but not heard? Sometimes, it’s the
other way around

Rock trapped within ice.
In the darkness microbes creep,
Life always finds a way.

Through computing cores,
Modeling our fragile hearts,
Cores of our bodies.

Saute G9a binding moeties,
Flavour with functional groups,
Eat to treat breast cancer.

Spring warblers fly north
Search native trees for larvae
Hungry chicks hatch and eat

When scientists are done,
Rumpelstiltskin editors
Spin dross to English.

Iron and algae
for hydrogels that can be
photodegraded

GM foods,
With foreign DNA,
Taste yummy!

Complex traits
Genotype phenotype
Environment too

Some Middlemists
Without genetic studies
Cast adrift

Soy milk tastes yucky
But the more flavor you add
The better it tastes

Pox viral crescents:
Suspiciously like quinoa…
Is it time for lunch?!?

The synaptic strength
through glutamate release
will help circuits learn

Examples from past competitors II

Asexual plants
invest in reproduction
gene expression puzzle.

Children must be seen
but not heard? Sometimes, it’s the
other way around

Spring warblers fly north
Search native trees for larvae
Hungry chicks hatch and eat

The examples above are (with some exception) from Crastina’s first haiku competition in 2016.

Our main sponsor is sciencejewelery1824.

The rules

The challenge is to describe your research – alternatively your work or studies in the STEMM field –in the form of a haiku.

  • Your submission should be posted in the comments below before 5 July, 23.59 CEST.
  • Your haiku should be a brief three-line poem in English. Please note that we are not purists when it comes to the right number of syllables, etc.; we will gladly accept whatever your high-school teachers accepted as a haiku.
  • To take part, you don’t have to be a scientist – you just have to feel a personal connection to science & STEMM. So, students are welcome, engineers are welcome, scientific librarians are welcome, science journalists are welcome, etc.
  • Every individual contestant can submit multiple haikus. Every poem will then be treated as a single submission.
  • Two prizes will be awarded: Poet of the People – where your peers will vote – and The Jury’s Grand Prize.
  • Submitted haikus will be published – with full acknowledgments – in Crastina’s social media channels. The copyright is your own, and we will not claim any intellectual ownership.

Questions?

Please contact olle@bergman.com

The prizes

One of the prizes is a DNA necklace from our generous sponsor sciencejewelery1824 – “science-inspired jewelry for scientists, doctors, nurses, researchers and everybody passionate about science”.

More details about the prizes will be announced. (If you want to sponsor us with science merchandise or books, please get in touch.)

The jury

The jury for the Jury’s Grand Prize will be announced shortly.

Time left to submit your Science haiku:

Applications are now closed!

Please submit your haiku in the comments below!

Don’t forget to include your name + one-sentence description of your research & work.

89 replies
  1. Olle Bergman
    Olle Bergman says:

    *** EXAMPLE ***

    Web writer showing contestants
    how words will flow;
    don’t forget to tell us who you are!

    Olle Bergman, project leader of Crastina
    Eskilstuna, Sweden

    *** EXAMPLE ***

    Reply
  3. Håkan (hakke) Karlsson
    Håkan (hakke) Karlsson says:

    I am an engineer with some experience in communication, and a fascination for words. My entrance is based on my 16 years of working with geographical data and analysis:

    As matter of fact
    In most concerns and matters
    Location matters

    Reply
  4. Johan Hamberg
    Johan Hamberg says:

    Geometrical
    continuum mechanics
    and topology

    provides physics with
    all-embracing descriptions
    by de Rham currents.

    Reply
  6. Christopher Aris
    Christopher Aris says:

    Human enamel
    Growing slower and thinner
    Milk and fish to blame

    Christopher Aris, I’m a bioarchaeology PhD student working with modern human teeth.

    Reply
  7. Dea Gogishvili
    Dea Gogishvili says:

    Activity probe
    LOX is trapped with the probe, boom!
    Enzyme detected

    Dea Gogishvili, Research intern
    Groningen, Netherlands

    Reply
  9. Marios Gabrielatos
    Marios Gabrielatos says:

    The lab stinks
    and the field bites;
    embrace the bioinformatics

    Marios Gabrielatos, Biology student at
    National and Kapodistrian University οf Athens.

    Reply
  11. Olle Bergman
    Olle Bergman says:

    I am so impressed by your submissions – it is amazing how much can be expressed with so few words! Not only factual content, but intellectual approaches and personal experiences.

    Reply
  12. Horst Ludwig
    Horst Ludwig says:

    Wiping the dark cloth
    aside on the glass over
    the Silver Book page

    (Codex Argenteus [silver bibeln / Silverbook] at Uppsala Univers. Library: What does a young student from a foreign country do on a most sunny afternoon in a country of the midnight sun?)

    At the forest foot
    welling, flickering light
    a purest water

    Reply
  14. Egle
    Egle says:

    Hi, Crastina!
    Here is one from personal experience, which I think many of us can recall to. :))

    Reviewer two wrote:
    “Not a cutting-edge research”
    Seems efforts don’t count

    Egle Bukarte
    PhD student in Chemical physics and photosynthesis

    Reply
  16. Cyrielle
    Cyrielle says:

    Hello Crastina, I’m a master 1 student in molecular and cellular biology.

    Cancer is clever,
    Immune system is smarter,
    Let’s boost this killer

    Reply
  17. Leorah Brooke McGinnis
    Leorah Brooke McGinnis says:

    I am a lab manager and one thing our lab studies is how some closely related toads lost ears and then regained them in some cases, and we can’t tell why.

    Toads are missing ears??
    Lost and found over again
    Evolving next door

    Reply
  18. Yash Verma
    Yash Verma says:

    Climate change is here
    Towards carbon storage we steer
    Will it be enough, I fear

    Hi, I am Yashvardhan Verma doing my PhD in geomechanics of carbon storage at IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Reply
  19. Jessica De Loma
    Jessica De Loma says:

    Arsenic in the Andes hides
    Can human natives thrive?
    Adapted they surely are!

    – Jessica De Loma
    PhD candidate studying arsenic in the South American Andes from a geneticist perspective.

    Reply
  20. Deborah Karl-Brandt
    Deborah Karl-Brandt says:

    Found any gold yet?
    And then his sheepdog steals
    the humerus

    A thousand and twohundred years old
    still the scapulas
    of a little child

    Reply
  23. Elizabeth Thomason
    Elizabeth Thomason says:

    Cells stuck in young state
    Mature them to wrap neurons
    Regrow myelin

    – Elizabeth Thomason, PhD student in Richmond, Virginia, United States

    Reply
  24. Heather Etchevers
    Heather Etchevers says:

    Prenatal mosaic
    Each cell unique together
    Develop their fates

    – Heather Etchevers, Ph.D., scientist at the Marseille Medical Genetics centre (INSERM, Aix-Marseille University), France
    My group and I study how small genetic changes starting in one cell after fertilization can lead to congenital malformations in humans and in our mouse models. Sometimes the change induces a decisional change in what the descendants of that cell would become, without necessarily a predetermined outcome, and sometimes it can have an indirect effect on neighboring cells. When cells have a slightly divergent genetic makeup from one another in the same organism, we call that “mosaic”. Which I find rather poetic. We are all of us mosaic.

    Thanks to this tweet! https://twitter.com/iamscicomm/status/1145293559290925057

    Reply
  27. Tuomas Hämälä
    Tuomas Hämälä says:

    on a mountain top
    against odds of random drift
    plant adaptation

    – Tuomas Hämälä, population geneticist; Post-Doctoral Associate, College of Biological Sciences, University of Minnesota.

    Reply
  28. Rebecca Hayes
    Rebecca Hayes says:

    A microbe’s defense
    In ultraviolet presence?
    Floral fluorescence.

    My name is Rebecca Hayes and I am a technician at the university of Pittsburgh. I study petal bacterial UV tolerance in relation to UV patterns in flowers.

    Reply
  29. Isabella Mandl
    Isabella Mandl says:

    A bat flaps away.
    Where are you, tagged animal?
    Radio-silence.

    I’m studying flying fox movements for conservation in the tropics! Hurrah!
    Here’s a second one:

    Do not ignore us
    shout the women, scientists
    a global movement

    Reply
  30. Sarah
    Sarah says:

    These pickup artists
    Think sex is a marketplace
    They keep suffering

    Sarah Martin, MA Sociology
    My research interests are gender, sexuality, and, specifically, masculinties and masculine internet subcultures. My MA research was about economic metaphor in pickup artist handbooks

    Reply
  31. Sarah
    Sarah says:

    You can not buy love
    It is an experience
    Not a transaction

    Sarah Martin, MA Sociology
    My research interests are gender, sexuality, and, specifically, masculinties and masculine internet subcultures. My MA research was about economic metaphor in pickup artist handbooks

    Reply
  32. Kolisa Yola Sinyanya
    Kolisa Yola Sinyanya says:

    I’m a PhD candidate in Physical Oceanography, area of specialization Marine Biogeochemistry, use nitrogen isotopes to explore how the Agulhas Current enhances carbon export potential in the subtropical Indian Ocean.

    Global warming leading to climate change!
    Save the planet with ocean microbes,
    Agulhas Current hard at work.

    Reply
  33. Scott Zona
    Scott Zona says:

    This haiku highlights litter-trapping plants, funnel-shaped plants that trap leaf litter and extract nutrients from it:

    Leaves fall like manna
    Intercepted and held in
    Secret compost piles

    Reply
  34. Scott Zona
    Scott Zona says:

    I do work with seed dispersal of Salvia, as this haiku states:

    Salvia’s small seeds
    Blown by wind or washed by rain
    Disperse to new sites

    Reply
  35. Scott Zona
    Scott Zona says:

    This haiku highlights my work with Salvia roemeriana, which produces two kinds of “seeds” (fruits, actually) that differ in size, dormancy, and dispersal ability:

    Large seeds germinate
    Small seeds stay dormant longer
    Heterocarpy

    Reply
  36. Belinda Kramer
    Belinda Kramer says:

    I’m a cancer researcher developing immune therapies to target childhood cancers

    Wandering T cell
    Redirected to attack
    Finds a new purpose

    Reply
  38. James Mollard
    James Mollard says:

    Twelve false shooting stars
    Record reflections of light
    But how right are they?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Uncertainties combined
    Untangled through more equations
    The errors come to light.

    A two-part (or before research and after research!) haiku on the research work of FIDUCEO, analysing the uncertainty of climate data records from satellite Earth observations.

    James Mollard – Post-doctoral Researcher, University of Reading, UK

    Reply
  40. Katy Walsh
    Katy Walsh says:

    I’m researching the effect of temporal glucose fluctuations on placental and fetal growth in pregnancies affected by gestational diabetes.

    Blood sugar rising,
    My lifeline begins changing,
    I’m growing, but why?

    Reply
  41. Oyuka Byambasuren
    Oyuka Byambasuren says:

    I’m a PhD candidate researching effectiveness of smartphone health apps and their potential to be used in clinical practice. My haiku ??

    “Smartphone in every hand
    Apps for every ailment
    None ever so helpful”

    Reply
  42. Claudia Brefeld
    Claudia Brefeld says:

    fragmented
    in A T C G
    your laughter

    Fulldome Festival
    thoughts feel out
    the event horizon

    between to cells
    the connection
    I’m looking for

    Claudia Brefeld, biological technical assistant at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Theoretical and Applied Biodiversity, Germany

    Reply
  44. Noemi Linden
    Noemi Linden says:

    I’m an undergraduate student investigating the mechanisms and effects of immune-cell-stem-cell-communication in wound repair and tissue regeneration.

    Excruciating
    Pain. Blot clot. Inflammation.
    Stem cells sense, repair.

    Wound inflammation
    Maybe more than pain, does it
    help regenerate?

    Smash! Injury. Pain.
    Needs fast regeneration
    Who tells the stem cells?

    Reply
  45. cezar-florin ciobîcă
    cezar-florin ciobîcă says:

    ceasefire agreement –
    honeybees returning home
    loaded with pollen

    ***
    I am a teacher and writer from Botosani, Romania.

    Reply
  46. Farha Sayeed
    Farha Sayeed says:

    Humans drink antibiotics like cups of tea,
    Bacteria flush it out like a bad memory,
    The key to this resistance is to burst open their Outer membrane protein treasury.
    I am a Master Student in Molecular biology from Umeå University, Sweden and work on proteins that regulate outer membrane Lipopolysaccharide in Vibrio cholerae.

    Reply

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