[MeFi]
The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition challenges higher degree students (PhD and MPhil) from Australia and New Zealand to communicate their research in three minutes to a non-specialist audience. Contestants are judged according to communication style, comprehension and engagement criteria. Here’s the 2011 Winner, Matthew Thompson (University of Queensland): Suspects, science and CSI.
3MT was established in 2008 by the University of Queensland, and extended to other Australian and New Zealander universities in 2010.
The 2011 finals were recently held at the University of Western Australia. In addition to winner Matthew Thompson, there were ten other finalists:
Runner-up: Suzie Ferrie (University of Sydney): Measuring nutrition in ICU
People’s Choice: Jack Rivers (University of Otago): Synthetic cannabinoids could save lives: The future of medicinal marijuana
Toni Aburime (Deakin University): Should limits be placed on the tenure of bank CEOs?: Evidence from Nigeria
Will Bignell (University of Tasmania): Enhancing the good omega-3s in Tasmanian lamb meat through genetics and diet
Kate Cantrell (Queensland University of Technology): Thoughts while travelling: the wandering trend in the travel stories of Australian women
Jamie Flynn (University of Newcastle): Propriospinal neurons and their role in recovery from spinal cord injury
Ryan Kempster (University of Western Australia): Survival of the stillest: predator avoidance strategies of shark embryos
Shervi Lie (University of South Australia): Nutrition around conception determines the baby’s metabolic health
Tanuja Raja (Monash University): Caspases: More than just killers
Penny Tok (Victoria University of Wellington): Do children with autism have an inner voice?.
Meanwhile.. Over at sciencemag.org the 53 entries in this year’s Dance Your Ph.D have been posted online.
Here’s an example: Human-Based Percussion and Self-Similarity Detection in Electro-acoustic Music by Anderson Mills. The essence of Anderson’s computational-acoustics dissertation can be boiled down to trying to teach a computer to hear percussion in music like a human. Having a human, Alain Rouvez, teach a robot, Shiny Robot, how to dance seemed like the perfect metaphor. [video link]
