UOC 3MT masters student winner, Charlotte Harrison, and UOC 3MT doctoral winner, Ben Topham, with their winning certificates.
Seven eager Otago Masters and PhD students lined up in the Rolleston Theatre for this year’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Christchurch campus heats in late June.
Now in its 16th year, the 3MT competition was established by the University of Queensland and has since been adopted by 900 universities in 35 countries worldwide.
Hosted by the Graduate Research School, the University of Otago competition is open to both thesis master’s and doctoral students, to communicate their research in no more than three minutes, with the help of only one static slide.
Introducing this year’s UOC heats, Dean of Postgraduate Studies, Associate Professor Marg Currie, explained the competition is aimed at honing presentation and communication skills among emerging researchers, testing them to explain their research to a lay audience.
Master of Public Health student Charlotte Harrison, from the Department of Population Health, was judged winner of UOC’s master’s student heat entries, with Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science student Ben Topham taking out the PhD student heat winner’s prize.
Charlotte engaged the audience with her energetic presentation, harking back to the 100% Pure New Zealand campaigns of the early 2000s to ask the rhetorical question, “How can we shift to a decarbonised system of transport in Aotearoa?”.
Ben took the audience on a three-minute journey to ‘Monocyte Bootcamp’, debating the use of monocytes as a potential new weapon to fight cancer and improve immunotherapy treatments.
Fellow competitors Sarah Cosgrove, Moizle Ocariza, Lorna Pairman, Lavagna Pillay and Sam Gibbs also entertained and informed with their presentations on subjects ranging from sex worker conditions during Covid-19, safe pharmaceutical prescribing for hospital patients, the key to efficient lactate clearance in the heart, equitable epigenetics for Pasifika heart health, and models for HPV vaccination coverage among 11 to13-year-olds.
Dr Helen Fitt from the campus’s Department of Population Health, and Dr Annika Seddon from the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, were joined by Dr Nick Baker from Dunedin’s Graduate Research School as judges for this year’s UOC heats. The trio said they were impressed with the high standards of content, energy, and presentation skills from all entrants.
UOC 3MT doctoral entrant Sam Gibbs in action.
Along with their certificates, Charlotte and Ben were each awarded prize money of $175 from the Office of the UOC Dean, Professor Suzanne Pitama.
Following all divisional heats, Otago’s 3MT® Grand Final will be held on 15 August, with the overall best Masters and Doctoral presentations each awarded $750 to assist with their research.
The University of Otago Doctoral winner will then participate in the online Asia-Pacific final later this year; with an opportunity for the best Masters contestant to represent the university at an online New Zealand Masters 3MT national inter-university challenge.
Last year, UOC Department of Medicine PhD candidate Hwei Ng won the overall University of Otago 3MT Runner-up Doctoral award and was chosen later in the year as People’s Choice award at the Matariki 3MT competition.
Fellow competitors Sarah Cosgrove, Moizle Ocariza, Lorna Pairman, Lavagna Pillay and Sam Gibbs also entertained and informed with their presentations on subjects ranging from sex worker conditions during Covid-19, safe pharmaceutical prescribing for hospital patients, the key to efficient lactate clearance in the heart, equitable epigenetics for Pasifika heart health, and models for HPV vaccination coverage among 11 to13-year-olds.
Dr Helen Fitt from the campus’s Department of Population Health, and Dr Annika Seddon from the Department of Pathology and Biomedical Science, were joined by Dr Nick Baker from Dunedin’s Graduate Research School as judges for this year’s UOC heats. The trio said they were impressed with the high standards of content, energy, and presentation skills from all entrants.
Along with their certificates, Charlotte and Ben were each awarded prize money of $175 from the Office of the UOC Dean, Professor Suzanne Pitama.
Following all divisional heats, Otago’s 3MT® Grand Final will be held on 15 August, with the overall best Masters and Doctoral presentations each awarded $750 to assist with their research.
The University of Otago Doctoral winner will then participate in the online Asia-Pacific final later this year; with an opportunity for the best Masters contestant to represent the university at an online New Zealand Masters 3MT national inter-university challenge.
Last year, UOC Department of Medicine PhD candidate Hwei Ng won the overall University of Otago 3MT Runner-up Doctoral award and was chosen later in the year as People’s Choice award at the Matariki 3MT competition.