3 minute thesis umn

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BME PhD student wins college-wide 3-Minute Thesis Competition

October 27, 2023 — Congratulations to Rebecca Butler and Minhan Jiang, who competed in the College of Science and Engineering (CSE) 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition on October 23. Butler won first place and is advancing to the University-wide competition on November 10. 

In the competition, CSE graduate students have exactly three minutes to explain their research in an engaging and easy-to-understand format. 

Rebecca Butler 

MD/PhD candidate

3MT title: Targeting tremors through deep brain stimulation

Thesis advisor: Matthew Johnson

Butler’s PhD research is focused on optimizing deep brain stimulation (DBS) as a therapy for essential tremor. By integrating a clinical trial for human subjects with essential tremor, ultra-high field imaging, computational modeling of DBS, and quantitative sensors, she aims to identify the neural pathways responsible for tremor reduction and for side effect emergence during therapy.

Minhan Jiang

PhD candidate

3MT title: Synergizing energy-based focal therapy and immunotherapy for enhanced cancer management 

Thesis advisor: John Bischof

Jiang’s research is focused on minimally invasive cancer focal therapies including thermal ablation, cryosurgery and irreversible electroporation to explore the role of focal therapy in priming the immune system. Her research also involves developing novel combinations of focal therapy with immunotherapy (e.g., immune checkpoint blockade) for improved primary and systemic cancer control.  

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3-Minute Thesis Competition Sparks New Ideas for Amritha Yellamilli

MD/PhD student Amritha Yellamilli represented the UMN Medical School this year at the  3-Minute Thesis competition , where she took second place honors from a panel of judges and was also selected as the People’s Choice winner from those in attendance. The idea: condense your thesis into a 3-minute presentation that can be understood by anyone, using only a single, static slide to illustrate your points.

Yellamilli studies cardiac regeneration – the heart’s natural ability to heal itself – in the von Berlo Lab at the Lillehei Heart Institute. Specifically, the team there is seeking to understand exactly which cells are responsible for the process. The 3-Minute Thesis competition, Yellamilli says, is a great opportunity to see the big picture of her work.

“As a scientist, you get so caught up in the little details,” says Yellamilli. “This forced me to take a step back and ask, ‘Why am I doing this? What is the impact I am hoping my research will have?’ ”

For Yellamilli, it’s all about improving heart health. “If we can increase the heart’s natural ability to generate new cells, we can replace the cells that are dying,” she says.

First, the team needs to figure out which cells are responsible for healing. Often, Yellamilli says, stem cells are removed from the heart and studied in cell culture. That is interesting, she says, but her team wants to know what actually happens in the heart – not in a culture.

When thinking of how to communicate the importance of studying the cells in their natural environment, Yellamilli’s imagination turns to nature. Tigers in a circus, she says, behave differently than those in the wild. “If you assumed all tigers behaved that way, you’d be in a lot of trouble. Cells behave a certain way in cell culture, but does that really mean that’s how they behave in the heart?”

The exercise of finding new ways to describe her work, she says, is helpful not only in learning to talk about her work but in exploring new perspectives.

“When you open it up to the public and get everyone thinking about it, you get a lot of interesting perspectives and questions that force you to think about it in a different way.”

Wu in Three-Minute Thesis

Congratulations to   Walter Wu  for winning the CLA three-minute thesis competition! Wu is a graduate student in the Cognitive and Brain Science (CAB) area advised by Dr. Gordon Legge in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. The  three-minute thesis  is a research communication competition for graduate students that challenges students to communicate the significance of their work for a general audience.

Wu also went on to the University-wide competition and won the People’s Choice ($150) award as well as second place overall ($250). Finalists may be invited to present to the University’s Board of Regents.

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UMN Grad Student Takes 2nd Place at Regional 3-Minute Thesis Competition

The graduate school is pleased to announce that umn graduate student paulina eberts took home the second place award at the 2023 midwest association of graduate schools (mags) three minute thesis competition.

After winning both the First Place and People's Choice Awards at the University of Minnesota's 2022 3-Minute Thesis Competition, Eberts represented the University at the regional competition on March 31, 2023 in Chicago, IL, placing second out of 50 participants. A doctoral student in the chemical engineering program, Eberts' presentation was titled "Decoding blood-brain barrier dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease." The first and second place winners will represent MAGS at the national Council of Graduate School competition on December 6-9, 2023 in Washington D.C.

The Three-Minute Thesis Competition challenges graduate students to present their research in just 180 seconds, in a way that can be understood by an intelligent audience with no background in the subject. This competition helps our graduate students develop presentation and communication skills; the benefits of preparing for a three-minute thesis competition are valuable regardless of career path, degree objective, or discipline. Participants are allowed to refer to one, static slide during their presentations, but may not use any other props or media.

Congratulations, Paulina!

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Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Graduate School Updates>

The latest COVID-19 news and information is available at  Penn State's Coronavirus Information website . 

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Update

On March 11 th  the University announced that beginning March 16 th  instruction for all students will be moving to a remote delivery format. Graduate students enrolled in resident courses should plan on participating remotely, and not coming to campus specifically for face-to-face instruction. Learn more at gradschool.psu.edu/covid19 .

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Three Minute Thesis

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The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is an academic research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. Through the competition, graduate and professional students can hone their academic and research presentation skills and their ability to effectively explain their research to a general audience. Each competitor has three minutes to speak and can use only one presentation slide.

The Graduate School will be hosting the 2024 Three Minute Thesis competition in partnership with the Graduate and Professional Student Association and the Graduate School Alumni Society .

Watch the Final Round

3MT at Penn State in 2024 

Penn State’s first University-wide 3MT Competition will take place over two rounds. To compete, graduate students must upload a video presentation during the submission period (January 8–February 9) and be available for the final, in-person round on Saturday, March 23, on the University Park campus.

Competitor Information

Learn more about eligibility requirements, the upcoming timeline, prize money, and more.

Judge Information

Learn about remote judging for the opening round, who can be a judge, judging criteria, and more.

Prizes 

• First Place: $1,000
• Second Place: $500
• People's Choice: $500

Competition Format

Opening Round — Video Format expand_more

Open call to any Penn State graduate or professional student conducting research to submit three-minute videos. Submissions will be judged by alumni, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, faculty, staff, and others. The top 10 students get invited to the final round as well as a free lunch at Penn State’s annual Doctoral Alumni Recognition Luncheon hosted by the Dean of the Graduate School. 

Final Round — In-Person Format expand_more

Saturday, March 23  10:00-11:15 a.m.  Penn Stater Hotel and Conference Center 

The final round will be live streamed from the University Park campus and will include a people’s choice prize selected by virtual and in-person audience ballots. Winners will be announced shortly after the competition.

Regional and National Competitions expand_more

The top-scoring Ph.D. student from Penn State’s final round will be invited to the regional 3MT competition hosted by the Northeast Association of Graduate Schools in April 2024 (exact date to be determined). Winners of the regional competition are invited to the national competition hosted by the Council of Graduate Schools. Students in master's and professional degree programs are eligible to participate in Penn State's competition but are not eligible for the regional or national competitions.

Why participate?

Megan Rossi, past 3MT winner at the University of Queensland, discusses how the 3MT competition helped her career.

Contact  

Direct all questions about Three Minute Thesis at Penn State to: [email protected] .  

Three Minute Thesis, Graduate Exhibition, or Both?

In spring 2024, Penn State graduate students can participate in two major research and scholarship communication events, the Three Minute Thesis and the  Graduate Exhibition . Students are welcome to participate in both but should be aware that each event has its own application process and deadlines.

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Monday, April 08, 2024

Three-Minute Thesis Grand Finale winners announced

The Office of Graduate Education and Life announced the winners of the annual Three-Minute Thesis Competition , which was held on April 3 during WVU Graduate Student Appreciation Week and Research Week.

For the first time in WVU 3MT competition history, two doctoral students tied for first place. Denis Ruto, from the Statler College, and Paige Zalman, PhD candidate from the College of Applied Human Services, received the same scores to win. Zalman also won the People’s Choice Award. 

Even though Ruto acknowledged that it was a great challenge to narrow down his dissertation and research to under three minutes, he impressed the judges on his presentation titled “Sustainable Nutrient Management Opportunities for Small Communities with Wastewater Lagoons.” 

Meanwhile, Zalman scored points with both the judges and audience members with her presentation on “Exploring Music Major Mental Health Using Photovoice and Narrative Inquiry.” She emphasized the importance of qualitative methodologies that can help people better understand the nature of problems people are researching today.

Second place was awarded to Kayla Steinberger, an immunology specialist in the School of Medicine, for her presentation on “Hypoxia Regulates Vessel-Modifying Macrophages and Vice Versa in Tumors.” She emphasized that, as a future scientist, it’s important to know how to best communicate her science to the public, so she takes every opportunity to get in front of people and “make stuff that's really hard, sound really easy.” 

Vaishakhi Suresh, an industrial and management systems engineering student in the Statler College, received third place for her research presentation on “Exploring the Challenges of Handling Mass Fatalities during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” When asked why she entered the competition, Vaishakhi said, “It's a great opportunity to talk about her research to the rest of the WVU community.” She was also excited to meet other students in different fields and learn more about their research.

This year’s judges included Ming Lei, senior associate vice president in the Office of Research and Graduate Education and vice dean of research in the School of Medicine; Rachel Morris, biology doctoral student in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences; Mikylah Myers, associate dean of artistic and scholarly achievement in the College of Creative Arts; Patricia Slagel, assistant director of advising and student operations of graduate programs in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics; and Daniel Totzkay, assistant professor of communication studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. 

The internationally renowned 3MT competition, originally founded by the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges doctoral students to present their research topic and its significance in three minutes using a single PowerPoint slide. Competitors develop academic, presentation and research communication skills while gaining experience pitching their research succinctly to a non-specialist audience. 

Grand Finale prizes include: 

• First Place Prize: $1,000 

• Second Place Prize: $750 

• Third Place Prize: $500 

• People’s Choice Prize: $250 

Read more about all ten grand finale finalists and learn more about the WVU 3MT Competition.

For more information, contact Betty Mei at  [email protected]. 

3 Minute Thesis Competition Returns to USU

Graduate students at the uniformed services university (usu) competed in a 3 minute thesis competition on april 3., april 8, 2024 by ian neligh.

Graduate students at the Uniformed Services University (USU) once again battled the clock as they presented their big ideas during the 3 Minute Thesis Competition on April 3. 

“This event helps students with learning how to convey knowledge to the public, practice with public speaking, and working on explaining their work,” says Summer Paulson, Graduate Student Council President and a member of this year’s 3 Minute Thesis competition planning committee. “Any thesis project from a graduate student can be presented, regardless of which of the USU Ph.D. graduate programs they hail from.”

Prizes were awarded to Air Force 2nd Lt. Cecelia Mangione for both first place and People’s Choice, to Marana Rekedal for second place and Mydirah Littlepage-Saunders for third place.

Starting at USU in 2018, the 3 Minute Thesis originally began at the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2008. The competition is now held at universities around the world.

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School of Chemistry & Biochemistry

College of sciences, 12 grad students named as finalists for 2024 three minute thesis competition.

Mar 26, 2024

After six intense preliminary rounds, twelve exceptional scholars have emerged from a pool of 65 talented candidates, earning their place as finalists in Georgia Tech's highly anticipated annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition. On Friday, April 5, 2024, these finalists will hit the stage, harnessing their research expertise, to deliver compelling presentations in a three-minute format.

Congratulations to the following twelve finalists:

Karina Bhattacharya MID Industrial Design 

Vinodhini Comandur, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Mo Jarin, Ph.D. Environmental Engineering 

Anamik Jhunjhunwala, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering 

Valeria Juarez, Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering 

Alexandra Patterson, Ph.D. Bioengineering 

Jeffrey Pattison, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Kantwon Rogers, Ph.D. Computer Science 

Mallika Senthil, MS Biomedical Engineering 

Wenting Shi, Ph.D. Chemistry and Biochemistry 

Shreyas Srivathsan, Ph.D. Aerospace Engineering 

Raghav Tandon, Ph.D. Machine Learning 

This year’s 3MT competition takes place on Friday, April 5, 2024, at 5:30 p.m. in the Atlantic Theater in the John Lewis Student Center. The entire Georgia Tech community is encouraged to attend the competition, which occurs as the finale of the 2024 Grad Student Appreciation Week. 3MT will also be streamed online and can be viewed at https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98696536715 .  Audience members and online viewers can vote for their favorite presenter to win the People’s Choice Award.  

Ph.D. winners can win up to $2,000 in research travel grants. The master's winner will receive a $1,000 research travel grant.   

Tech’s 3MT competition is coordinated by the Office of Graduate Education in partnership with the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), The Naugle Communications Center, and the Language Institute.  

For more information, visit grad.gatech.edu/3mt . 

Brittani Hill | Marketing and Communications Manager 

Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Education 

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From left: Paul DiStefano, Dean Levon Esters, Auja Bywater and Aditya Sapra. Credit: The Graduate School. All Rights Reserved.

Chemical engineering graduate student wins first place at Three Minute Thesis contest

March 27, 2024

Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared on Penn State News .  

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Aditya Sapre, a doctoral candidate in chemical engineering, won first place in the final round of Penn State’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, held on March 23 at the Penn Stater Hotel & Conference Center. He won a $1,000 cash prize and will advance to represent Penn State at the regional Three Minute Thesis competition at the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools.    

“It’s very, very exciting,” Sapre said. “I have been practicing this for a long time and it’s all with the support of my group members and my professor who helped me trim the pitch in a particular way to convey all the points of our research and stay in three minutes.”   

Two other Penn State graduate students were honored as award recipients in the final round of the contest.  

“We have some extremely talented students,” said Levon Esters, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School following the event's presentations. “It really makes me feel proud to be dean of the Graduate School at Penn State and know I’m going to come to work every day and be in the midst of talented students like yourselves. You all are going to do great things for years to come. A lot of the research we learned about today is going to change lives in so many impactful ways.”    

Auja Bywater, a doctoral student in food, science and technology, was awarded the $500 second-place prize. Paul DiStefano, a doctoral student in cognitive psychology, earned $500 and the People’s Choice Award, sponsored by the Graduate and Professional Student Association. Sapre and Bywater were selected by a panel of invited judges, and DiStefano’s award was chosen via in-person and online voting from the audience after the competition ended.    

The judges for the final round included Penn State alumnus Bimal Balakrishnan, professor and associate dean for research, College of Arts and Architecture, Mississippi State University; Kathy Drager, associate dean for research and graduate education, College of Health and Human Development, and professor of communication sciences and disorders; Esther Obonyo, associate professor of architectural engineering and director of Penn State’s Global Building Network; and Priyanka Paul, Penn State doctoral student in human development and family studies.    

The award recipients were three of 11 finalists that competed on March 23. That group came from a group of 60 students from 42 graduate programs who submitted videos as part of the first round of the competition earlier this year.   

Sapre’s presentation was titled “High Throughput and Cost-Effective Ways of Protein Identification,” and focused on one of the foremost challenges in drug discovery, pinpointing the specific target protein that can bind with the correct drug. Bywater’s presentation was titled “Improving Food Safety: Exploring Bacterial Diversity in Hydroponic Farming,” and shared her study that carried out a longitudinal assessment of microbial load of nutrient solution in different hydroponic farming systems. DiStefano’s presentation, titled “Is a Hotdog a Sandwich?: Measuring Overinclusive Thinking and Creativity,” provided an overview of a novel measure he developed that is designed to assess overinclusive thinking.    

The Three Minute Thesis is an academic research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland, Australia. Through the competition, graduate and professional students honed their academic and research presentation skills and their ability to effectively explain their research to a general audience. Each competitor had three minutes to speak and could use only one presentation slide.    

The Graduate School hosted the first University-wide 3MT competition in 2024 and plans to host another competition in the 2024-25 academic year. More information will be available on the Graduate School’s website in the fall 2024 semester.    

The event was live streamed and recorded, and community can view the competition on the Graduate School’s YouTube channel.

The Graduate School: 2024 Three Minute Thesis Competition. Credit: The Graduate School at Penn State

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Three-Minute Thesis Grand Finale winners announced

Doctoral researcher Denis Ruto was awarded first place for his 3-minute thesis presentation on “Sustainable Nutrient Management Opportunities for Small Communities with Wastewater Lagoons.”

The Office of Graduate Education and Life announced the winners of the annual  Three-Minute Thesis Competition , which was held on April 3 during WVU Graduate Student Appreciation Week and Research Week.

Story by WVU Today Photos by WVU Today

Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

For the first time in WVU 3MT competition history, two doctoral students tied for first place. Denis Ruto, from the Statler College , and Paige Zalman, PhD candidate from the College of Applied Human Services, received the same scores to win. Zalman also won the People’s Choice Award. 

Even though Ruto acknowledged that it was a great challenge to narrow down his dissertation and research to under three minutes, he impressed the judges on his presentation titled “Sustainable Nutrient Management Opportunities for Small Communities with Wastewater Lagoons.” 

Meanwhile, Zalman scored points with both the judges and audience members with her presentation on “Exploring Music Major Mental Health Using Photovoice and Narrative Inquiry.” She emphasized the importance of qualitative methodologies that can help people better understand the nature of problems people are researching today.

Second place was awarded to Kayla Steinberger, an immunology specialist in the School of Medicine, for her presentation on “Hypoxia Regulates Vessel-Modifying Macrophages and Vice Versa in Tumors.” She emphasized that, as a future scientist, it’s important to know how to best communicate her science to the public, so she takes every opportunity to get in front of people and “make stuff that's really hard, sound really easy.” 

Vaishakhi Suresh, an industrial and management systems engineering student in the Statler College, received third place for her research presentation on “Exploring the Challenges of Handling Mass Fatalities during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” When asked why she entered the competition, Vaishakhi said, “It's a great opportunity to talk about her research to the rest of the WVU community.” She was also excited to meet other students in different fields and learn more about their research.

This year’s judges included Ming Lei, senior associate vice president in the Office of Research and Graduate Education and vice dean of research in the School of Medicine; Rachel Morris, biology doctoral student in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences; Mikylah Myers, associate dean of artistic and scholarly achievement in the College of Creative Arts; Patricia Slagel, assistant director of advising and student operations of graduate programs in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics; and Daniel Totzkay, assistant professor of communication studies in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. 

The internationally renowned 3MT competition, originally founded by the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges doctoral students to present their research topic and its significance in three minutes using a single PowerPoint slide. Competitors develop academic, presentation and research communication skills while gaining experience pitching their research succinctly to a non-specialist audience. 

Grand Finale prizes include: 

• First Place Prize: $1,000 

• Second Place Prize: $750 

• Third Place Prize: $500 

• People’s Choice Prize: $250 

Read more about all ten grand finale finalists and learn more about the WVU 3MT Competition.

Contact: Paige Nesbit Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources 304.293.4135, Paige Nesbit

For more information on news and events in the West Virginia University Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, contact our Marketing and Communications office:

Email: [email protected] Phone: 304-293-4135

Statler College Marketing and Communications

J. Paige Nesbit, Director Phone:   304.293.4135 |  Email:   [email protected]

1374 Evansdale Drive | PO Box 6070 Morgantown, West Virginia 26506-6070

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