Jan Schmoranzer looks like the typical postdoc: longish hair, glasses, a slightly rumpled button-down shirt. Standing in front of a packed crowd of attendees of this year's American Society for Cell Biology annual meeting in Washington, DC, Schmoranzer introduced the four-minute-long movie that got him here. The Columbia University scientist earned one of the ASCB Celldance 2007 Awards, presented last week. His movie Cell Portraits, which received an Honorable Mention, stars him as he goes through the drudgery of his day: Walking through tiny hallways to reach his tucked-away lab, scooping ice chips, heating up his lunch. "There's no scientific information whatsoever," Schmoranzer jokes. The point of the movie, he explains, is to show non-scientists what a typical day in the lab looks like. "Scientists are humans." At the end of the movie, however, a series of beautiful images scroll by, demonstrating that Schmoranzer's seemingly mundane lab work is...

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