UNMC Three Minute Thesis Competition

University of Nottingham > Blogs > Malaysia Research and Knowledge Transfer > Competition > UNMC Three Minute Thesis Competition

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UoN Blogs / Malaysia Research and Knowledge Transfer

September 7, 2016, by Graham Kendall

The UNMC Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition was held on the 8th Sep in the Great Hall.

I always look forward to this event and I was fortunate enough to be invited as one of the judges again this year. From memory, this is the fourth or fifth year that I have been invited to do this.

The Three Minute Thesis (or 3MT) competition asks post-graduates to present their research in three minutes. If they exceed the three minutes, even by a second, they are disqualified.

The other rules are also just as strict and include things such as:

They are allowed one slide that must be available from the start of the presentation. It cannot have any transitions or animations
There can be no other form of audio-visual assistance such as music, videos etc.
The candidate cannot use any props
The medium of communication is via the spoken word. No singing, poetry, rapping etc. is allowed

The winner of this competition goes forward to compete against the winners of the UK and China campuses. The winner of that contest represents the University of Nottingham at the main U21 competition.

This year saw a record number of 20 entries from UNMC. The speakers were all of very high quality. We often comment on things such as not making contact, starting off very nervous etc., but these were not apparent this year. Thus judges wrote very few negative comments down when scoring each presentation.

This led to a very tough session when the judges reached their final decisions. Rather than taking about half an hour (as it has in previous years), this time it took over an hour of, sometimes, quite heated debate.

But we arrived at an eventual decision, with the order being as follows:

Winner

Lillian Joyce Among Olule (Title: Capturing Signals then Charging Batteries)

Runner Up

Mohammed Ayoub Juman (Title: Future Plantation Helpers)

There was also a vote by the audience members (The People’s Choice Award). This also went to Lillian.

On behalf of the judges, we would like to thank all the contestants. It really was an exceptional year and congratulations to Lillian for her two first places. We wish you every success in the tri-campus competition.

Below, we present a selection of photographs from the day.