This annual event, which showcases graduate students' ability to distill their nine-hour thesis down to three minutes, returns to campus

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) final competition, an annual tradition that celebrates graduate students while they explain their thesis research in three minutes or less, will take place on Feb. 7, 2024, from 4 to 6 p.m., in the University Memorial Center’s Glenn Miller Ballroom.

Ten students will be competing in this event, which is free and open to the public, but registration is required. This year’s competitors include:

• Leopold Beuken, mechanical engineering, Flight by Feel
• Georgia Butcher, anthropology, Drone Pilots and the Side Effects of Remote War
• Saima Kazmi, advertising, public relations and media design, Psychological Distance in Ads and Moral Disengagement
• Lyanna Kessler, integrative physiology, Aftershock: When COVID Becomes Long COVID
• Alex Meyer, aerospace engineering, Binary Asteroids and the DART Impact
• Zachary Schiffman, chemistry, The Urea Molecule: From Fertilizer… to Climate Change?
• Emma St. Lawrence, media studies, To Seek Newer Worlds: Media & Reality in a Time of Plague
• Aaquib Tabrez, computer science, Building Trust & Reliance in Human-Machine Teams via Transparent Algorithms
• Ruhan Yang, creative technology and design, cubo: Paper Modular Robot You Can Build From Home
• Spencer Zeigler, geological sciences, The Missing Pages of Earth History

The 3MT event began in 2008 when the state of Queensland, Australia, suffered from a severe drought. To conserve water, residents were encouraged to time their showers, and many people had a three-minute egg timer fixed to the wall in their bathroom. The then-Dean of the University of Queensland Graduate School, Emeritus Professor Alan Lawson, decided to apply the same approach with his students in a first of its kind competition.

3MT challenges graduate students to describe their research within three minutes to a general audience. To prepare, beginning last fall, 29 students were asked to participate in a series of workshops focusing on storytelling, writing, presentation skills and improv comedy techniques. They then held a preliminary competition and whittled the competition down to ten finalists.

The graduate students competing during this year’s 3MT finals will be evaluated by a panel of judges on their comprehension, content, engagement and communication.

The winner of the competition will receive $1,500 in prize money and will have the chance to compete at the state and regional competitions as the University of Colorado Boulder’s representative. The runner-up and the People’s Choice winner, voted on by the live audience, will also receive funding.

More information about the competition is available on the Three Minute Thesis’s webpage.