Three minutes, one slide, your thesis!

If you’re a research student looking for a challenge, you’ll be pleased to know that the University is accepting registrations for the Trans-Tasman Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition (opens in a new window).

Part of being a professional researcher is communicating your work to a broad audience and the 3MT competition is a great way to learn this skill.

Consolidating years of research and information into a three-minute speech may sound near to impossible, but it can be done! Last year, Tim Paris, a PhD student with the MARCS Institute, did just that at the 3MT Trans-Tasman final and won first prize, presenting ‘Brain Waves that Predict the Future’ and winning a $5,000 research grant. His win has also ensured that UWS has the honour of hosting the final of this year’s 3MT competition on 18 October.

Over the next couple of months, Schools and Research Institutes will be holding their own 3MT competitions to select their representative for the UWS final. Research students from all disciplines are encouraged to enter – past winners have come from a variety of fields including humanities, cultural studies and science, and the University is keen to have every School and Research Institute represented at the UWS final.

“It was great to have the opportunity to meet with a lot of other students doing very similar things – this led to some great friendships,” says Tim. “And the process of articulating your thesis is worthwhile in itself. Whenever I go into a job interview in the future I have the best parts of my PhD, the real essence of it, wrapped up in an explanation that even non-specialists can understand. That will be a definite advantage.”

Tim says the media attention was another positive outcome of the competition. “You get a lot of attention and assistance from different sources and different people who you may have thought were unrelated or unable to help you with your research,” explains Tim.

“The best thing is sharing my research with others,” says Munirah Shaik Kadir, a PhD student in the Centre for Positive Psychology and Education in the School of Education who competed in the 2013 UWS final. “Another satisfaction was getting the key ideas of my research delivered in exactly three minutes, and getting a loud applause from the audience when I finished!”

Munirah presented at the competition last year, speaking about her research which looks into the reasons for the declining enrolment of students in physics courses and finding out why it has a reputation for being a difficult subject.

“I had to organise my ideas and practise many times to get it within three minutes,” says Munirah. “My goal was to get the audience excited about my research, so I thought of anecdotes and appropriate hand gestures to engage the audience so that I had their full attention.

“I would recommend that students participate in the 3MT competition because it obtains publicity for their research. You also acquire organisational and communication skills and learn to communicate about your research concisely when asked in a casual conversation.”

For more information about the 3MT competition and how to register, visit the UWS 3MT webpage (opens in a new window). 

Need inspiration? Check out some past 3MT presentations from Tim Paris (opens in a new window), MARCS Institute; Josh Meyer (opens in a new window), School of Humanities and Communication Arts; Greg Whiteley (opens in a new window), from the former School of Natural Sciences; Sam Lupton (opens in a new window), School of Medicine; and Aimee Bourne (opens in a new window), Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment.