Going Gaga
Rice alumna did vocals on Lady Gaga parody video that became a viral sensation

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh …

Rice alumna Stephanie Nemir is not caught in a bad romance, but her voice is caught in a Lady Gaga video parody that has had more than 2.1 million views on YouTube.

	PHOTO BY PAT WALSH
	STEPHANIE NEMIR

The 2010 Rice Ph.D. graduate in bioengineering is now a third-year medical student at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), where her classmates asked her to sing ”Bad Project,” a take-off on ”Bad Romance” that pokes fun at the hassles faced by graduate students doing lab research.

”I want good data, a paper in Cell, but I got a project straight from hell,” goes the chorus.

Nemir didn’t have to wear any of Gaga’s trademark wigs or wacky wardrobe because she doesn’t actually appear in the video. But she sang all the lead and background vocals, which were lip-synched by fellow classmates.

Nemir recorded the vocals in the apartment of BCM student David Shim. ”He plugged a microphone into his computer and handed me the lyrics,” Nemir said. ”We did it in two takes, but in retrospect, if I had known 2 million people were going to hear me sing, I would have requested a few more takes. I think I’m off-key sometimes.”

Perhaps her self-criticism is due to four years of vocal training at Yale while earning a B.S. in biomedical engineering and another two years of voice lessons at Rice’s Shepherd School of Music while working on her Ph.D. through the Rice/BCM Medical Scientist Training Program.

Though Nemir might not think her vocal performance was perfect, the video won first place in a contest held by Baylor’s Molecular and Human Genetics Department. Shim and BCM postdoc Mary Wiese directed, choreographed and edited the video for the contest.

Nemir, who grew up in El Paso, Texas, said she was thrilled to be asked to sing this particular song because ”Bad Romance” is one of her favorite music videos. ”It really caught my imagination.”

Her enjoyment of singing for others is evident by her extracurricular interests while at Rice. She appeared as Cinderella in the Rice Players’ production of ”Into the Woods” and as Mary Magdalene in Brown College’s production of ”Jesus Christ Superstar.” She also performed in the musicals ”Secret Garden” at Martel and ”Cabaret” at Lovett.

But Nemir’s theatrical endeavors were secondary to her Ph.D. thesis, for which she studied how cells sense and respond to their environment — a phenomenon with applications for tissue engineering. Her Ph.D. adviser was Jennifer West, the Isabel C. Cameron Professor and chair for bioengineering.

Nemir said the ”Bad Project” references to unlabeled test tubes, ruined specimens, unpleasant smells and messy lab books brought back memories of the frustrations of doing tedious lab work.

”Every Ph.D. student goes through that,” she said. ”You can tell by reading the comments posted on the YouTube video that this is a common experience among grad students all over the world. Students from Brazil and China have said, ‘Oh my gosh! This is my life.”’ That commonality might account for the video’s phenomenal following on YouTube.

Nemir noted that even the scientific journal Cell, which is shown in the video, tweeted about it. And the Feb. 4 issue of the journal Science mentioned the video.

Because most viewers don’t know that Nemir does all the singing in the video, she doesn’t get many e-mails about her performance. But she said feedback from family and friends has been very positive.

”My mother likes to read all the YouTube comments and remark on them,” Nemir said. ”She told me someone posted that the singer has really great diction, and then she added, ‘That’s what your dad said too when he watched the video.”’

Wiese, who impersonates Gaga in the video, has been getting personal e-mails about her performance ever since a Los Angeles newspaper article about the video identified her by name.

”Mary forwards them to the rest of us so we can get a kick out of them,” Nemir said. ”Some people have e-mailed that they would like to have her as a postdoc in their lab. And a bail-bonds company said they noticed she was looking at a job posting for a bail-bond agent in the video and would love to see her resume.”

Speaking of resumes, Nemir will graduate from medical school in December and plans to do a residency in plastic and reconstructive surgery. ”Ultimately I’m interested in going into academia where I can hopefully combine a clinical practice with research and teaching,” she said. ”I would like to be involved in translating tissue engineering and biomaterial advances from the laboratory into clinical practice. Right now much of surgical reconstruction for cancer or trauma involves creating a defect to fill a defect, but I’m hopeful that someday we won’t have to make that tradeoff.”

For the time being, Nemir said she is enjoying ”my 15 minutes of fame.”

”I have no doubt that another viral video will displace us next week,” she said. ”I’m grateful that the video has been well-received and that we’ve been able to bring some comic relief to frustrated scientists around the world. Anything beyond that is just a bonus.”

Despite the viral success of the video on YouTube, one person who hasn’t posted a comment is Lady Gaga.

”That would be really cool if she did,” Nemir said.