Pharmacy hosts inaugural 3-Minute Thesis competition for graduate students
The College of Pharmacy held its inaugural 3-Minute Thesis competition (3MT) in January to give students an opportunity to hone their scientific communication skills through short, but impactful presentations. The competition requires the students to present their research problem in three minutes or less with the aid of only a single PowerPoint slide.
Students were scored on both content and engagement criteria to ultimately determine the winners of the competition. The students with the three highest scores received a cash prize. The top three placing students were:
- Mayuri Patel, a third-year graduate student working the McElroy lab
- Ethan Whipp, a student working in the Lapalombella lab
- Jack Stromatt, a student working in the Baker lab
For placing first in the college’s competition, Patel earned the opportunity to compete in the campus-wide competition hosted by the graduate school on Feb. 8.
“This event is a great opportunity for our students to practice a style of scientific presentation that they may not be as familiar with,” said Dr. James Fuchs, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Pharmacy. “The competition’s emphasis is on big picture ideas and significance rather than getting into all of the details of a project that an individual may have been working on for several years.”
For most graduate students, communication skills are developed primarily through classroom assignments, seminars and presentations at professional meetings - and ultimately culminate in a successful thesis defense and job interviews before moving on to the next phase of their career. The 3MT experience helps students to take a step back and think about how to communicate their research most effectively to the public.
“I received a lot of positive feedback about the event from students and faculty,” said Dr. Fuchs. “We hope to be able to build on the success of our 3MT competition in subsequent years and will continue to expand the career development resources available to our students.”
The 3MT competition was originally founded at the University of Queensland and a local version of 3MT has been held by The Ohio State University Graduate School (https://gradsch.osu.edu/three-minute-thesis-3mt) for several years.