Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Contestants Explain Research to General Audiences

ATLANTA--Georgia State University graduate students took top prizes on March 25 at the university’s spring Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, where they were challenged to explain their research and scholarship to a general audience in a short time.

3MT is a research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland in Australia in 2008. The premise of the competition is to develop academic, presentation and research communication skills. It supports the development of students’ capacities to explain their research in language appropriate to an intelligent but non-specialist audience.

Seven master’s and seven doctoral students from multiple disciplines competed. A panel of judges awarded first-, second- and third-place prizes. The audience was also given a chance to vote for a people’s choice award in each degree category. Support for the competition was provided by the University Library and the Office of the Associate Provost for Graduate Programs.

Winners included:

Doctoral Winners

1st Place – $500 & People’s Choice
Mary Fernandes – Program: Clinical Neuropsychology
College/School: College of Arts and Sciences
Title: Associations Between Pupillary Response Patterns to Emotional Faces and Self-Reported Social Anxiety
Adviser: Erin Tone, Ph.D.

View Fernandes' presentation here: 

2nd Place – $250
Ramesh Manyam – Program: Computer Science
College/School: College of Arts and Sciences
Title: Deep Learning Model for Predicting Readmissions Following Cardiac Surgery
Adviser: Yanqing Zhang, Ph.D.

3rd Place – $150
Thaddeus Johnson – Program: Criminal Justice & Criminology
College/School: Andrew Young School of Policy Studies
Title: Making Sense of the School-to-Prison-Pipeline: Connecting Exclusionary School Discipline, Susceptibility, and Race
Adviser: Eric Sevigny, Ph.D.

Master's Winners

1st Place – $500
Michelle D’Amico – Program: Public Health-Biostatistics
College/School: School of Public Health
Title: Examining Associations between Availability of Paid Sick Leave and Preventive Health Behaviors in a National Sample of Older Adults
Adviser: Matthew Hayat, Ph.D.

View D'Amico's presentation here:

2nd Place – $250
Sara Gardner – Program: Anthropology
College/School: College of Arts and Sciences
Title: An Experimental Study of Bone Tools from Swartkrans Cave, South Africa
Adviser: Frank Williams, Ph.D.

3rd Place – $150 & People’s Choice
Amirah Hurst – Program: Biology
College/School: College of Arts and Sciences
Title: Effects of Early Life Opiate Exposure on the Brain
Adviser: Anne Murphy, Ph.D.

For a list of finalists who competed in this year’s 3MT contest, visit https://provost.gsu.edu/2019/03/07/spring-2019-three-minute-thesis-competition-finalists-announced-final-round-takes-place-march-25/.