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Amanda Dobbs
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Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development
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ATLANTA –Georgia State’s young researchers are showcasing their work and demonstrating the wide range of research, creativity and scholarship underway across the university.
A pair of recent events gave scholars the opportunity to celebrate their research accomplishments, improve their presentation skills and share their work with peers and professionals.
Georgia State’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition is a yearly event sponsored by the university’s Graduate School where participants have three minutes to present compelling orations on their thesis or dissertation topics. The competition helps students concisely explain their research discoveries to a non-specialty audience.
Topics at the March 29 event included fields as diverse as astronomy, public health, psychology and economics. Winners of the competition were awarded cash prizes. The competition was originally developed by the University of Queensland in Australia in 2008.
Stella Mayerhoff is a doctoral student in the department of Psychology. Her presentation took first place in the Master's portion of the competition. She presented her thesis research, which concentrates on the process known as cognitive offloading in non-human primates — or the use of physical effort to reduce the amount of mental effort needed for a task. This includes things like saving a phone number, writing a to-do list or setting something by the door so it’s not forgotten. She says it was a great opportunity to share her work with a new audience.
“As graduate students, we get a lot of experience presenting our work to people in our fields but the 3MT competition challenges us to consider how to communicate our research to a broader audience," Mayerhoff said. “It was also a great opportunity to learn more about research being conducted in fields very different from my own.”
Dozens of students also presented their work at the Georgia State Undergraduate Research Conference (GSURC), sponsored by the university’s Honors College.
GSURC invites students from any discipline to submit their scholarly and creative projects as posters, oral presentations and artistic or creative presentations. Presentations for the April 11 event were evaluated by panels of faculty judges for awards in categories including artistic displays, film displays, musical performances, and oral and poster presentations. Special sets of awards were also given for environmentally-centered projects and projects focused on diversity, equity and inclusion.
Vice President for Research and Economic Development Tim Denning gave the keynote at the gathering. He said these events are helping to develop the next generation of researchers.
“Curiosity and creativity are absolutely essential when it comes to research. Seeing the work of these outstanding students shows me we have those things in abundance here at Georgia State,” he said.
Details about the GSURC conference and a full list of winners are available on the GSURC website. You can also find more information about the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) via its website. To learn more about research at Georgia State University, visit research.gsu.edu.
