That’s it. That’s all they had. Three minutes to tell us about their graduate research and how it’s going to change our world.
Now, the final result of the UBC 3 Minute Thesis (3MT™) Competition Finals is, well, final! Here are the names of those victorious in the 6 week campus wide battle which played out the afternoon of Tuesday May 10 to a standing room only crowd in the Ballroom of the Graduate Student Centre.
1st Place: Andrew Ming-Lum, Experimental Medicine
Thesis Title: Drugs From the Sea: For Treatment of Inflammatory Disease
2nd Place and People’s Choice Award: Guang Yang, Neuroscience
Thesis Title: Development of Novel Therapeutics for Stroke and Neurodegenerative Diseases
3rd Place: Leah Lim, Microbiology & Immunology
Thesis Title: Drug Combinations Against Tuberculosis
Turning in wonderful presentations and completing the field of 6 finalists were:
Ryan Andrew Murphy, Education Thesis Title: What’s Left of Anarchism?
Sarah Chow, Cellular & Physiological Sciences Thesis Title: Mending Broken Hearts: A Novel Approach to Designing Heart Rate Controlling Drugs
Azadeh Goudarzi, Materials Engineering Thesis Title: Tough Self-Healing Bone Cement
L to R: Ryan Andrew Murphy, Azadeh Goudarzi, Leah Lim (3rd), Andrew Ming-Lum (1st), Sarah S. Chow, Guang Yang (2nd & People’s Choice)
Many thanks to the Finals judging panel:
Dr. Herbert Rosengarten – Professor, Dept. of English, UBC Writing Centre
Dr. Blake Gilks – Proffesor, Dept. of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Dr. Susan Watts – Assistant Dean, Communications, Faculty of Forestry
3MT™ (3 Minute Thesis) is a competition that challenges graduate students to hone their communications and presentation skills by clearly and powerfully articulating their research into a 3 minute oration to a general audience. The 2011 UBC 3 Minute Thesis™ competition was based on the competition format first developed by the University of Queensland and used with their kind permission. The University of British Columbia is the first North American University to hold a 3MT™ competition under the rules and guidelines developed at Queensland.
Down-under the competition is something of a sensation and from its beginnings in 2008 at the University of Queensland, by 2010 the contest had expanded to include the 50,000 graduate students from 33 schools across Australia and New Zealand.
With the first UBC competition’s great success organizer and Graduate Pathways to Success Program Manager Dr. Elizabeth Wallace, expresses her hope that not only will the competition become an annual event at UBC but also that colleges and universities throughout BC and across Canada will join in the fun. She says, “Though it is a competition, it is a fun event where graduate students not only have the opportunity to develop their skill in presenting their work, but also share with their fellow students and the entire community their passion and enthusiasm for discovery.”
Congratulations to all of the nearly 100 graduate students who took on the challenge to participate, honed their presentation skills and competed in 7 faculty organized heats held on the UBC Vancouver campus over 6 weeks of competition. The semi-final round was a wonderful showcase of graduate student research where 15 heat winners showed us how it should be done. The top 6 then played out the final round to a full house for prizes, kudos and a place in UBC history.
The Faculty of Graduate Studies also wishes to thank all of the UBC staff and faculty involved with coaching and organizing the event, without you our graduate students would not have had this wonderful opportunity.
