The final round for UF’s Three Minute Thesis Competition will be held Tuesday.
The competition, developed by the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges graduate students to present their research in a three-minute elevator talk using only one PowerPoint slide. This is the second 3MT competition held at UF.
“It pushes students to condense their research,” said Regina Martuscello, the runner-up in last year’s competition. Her presentation last year was based on her nutritional research about how diet can manipulate cancer.
The finals are at 2 p.m. in the Reitz Union Auditorium and are free. The winner will receive $500, the runner-up $350 and the people’s choice award winner $250, according to the web page.
Out of 75 students who registered, the 10 finalists this year are Kimberly Hawkins, Chanda Jones Littles, Hannah Allen, Derek Archer, Douglas Bennion, Lydia Little, Jerald Pinson, Danielle Tolson, William Brooks and Shraddha Sundaram.
The topics range from Tolson’s study of young adults’ responses to parents, teachers, supervisors and police, to Allen’s research on ketogenic (low-carb) theory for seizures.
Participants had to go through four preliminary rounds held over three days, said Emilia Hodge, the graduate education outreach director in the division of graduate student affairs.
The audience will vote on their favorite presentation for the people’s choice award, she said.
Anyone is allowed to come and observe the presentations in the audience, which Martuscello said is part of the challenge.
“Normally, (participants) are good at explaining their research to people in their field,” Martuscello said.
The judges make decisions based on three criteria: how a participant communicated his or her research and its significance to a non-specialized audience, how well the audience understood the research and how much the presentation made the audience want to know more.
“The main thing we ask the judges to look for is what the presentation (conveys) to a non-professional, non-technical audience,” Hodge said.
[A version of this story ran on page 8 on 4/7/2015 under the headline “Thesis competition down to 10; final round on Tuesday”]
