Love that dress! Celebrating science on the red carpet

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Scientists are, on the whole, pretty rad. It would be great if they were given the celebrity red carpet treatment the way, you know, celebrities are. Tunnel engineer and fashion designer Matthew Hubble agreed, which is why he designed a gala dress for Nobel Prizewinner Dr. May-Britt Moser. Click here to see more of Hubble’s dress and spin it round for a full view.

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Photo: Henrik Montgomery/NTB scanpix

“One of my dreams is to see a Nobel laureate like you being treated in the same way as an actor who wins an Oscar, with a beautiful designer dress that you can wear while walking the red carpet. It will be a great honour for me if you will take a dress from me to wear at the Nobel Prize Awards Ceremony,” Hubble said to Moser when he wrote to her after her Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was first made public.

The stunning ballgown combines art with science – beautiful, yet relevant. The beaded grid evokes the research that Norwegian neuroscientist Dr. Moser did on grid cells to achieve her Nobel laureate status. It looks like elven starlight, but in fact the sequins and beads represent neurons seen close-up – you have sequins for the soma, seed beads for the axon terminals and tubes for the dentrites and axons. Simply gorgeous!

It was fantastic to see Dr. Moser awarded for her discovery of the brain’s ‘inner GPS’ that helps us navigate our environment, a joint achievement and accolade shared with her husband Edvard Moser and researcher John O’Keefe.

The Nobel Assembly said that this grid cell work represented a ‘paradigm shift’ in how cells work together to carry out cognitive functions, and could help scientists to understand the underlying workings of diseases like Alzheimer’s.

We’re talking an incredible achievement here. And an incredible dress.

Dr. Moser being given wonderfully designed dresses and recognition for her work? That, along with increased public recognition of the sciences and women in STEM, is worth rolling out the red carpet for.

Main photo: Geir Mogen / NTNU via Matthewhubble.com