First-, second- and third-place honors were awarded, along with a People’s Choice winner.
Three Texas Tech University Graduate School students delivered memorable performances Wednesday to claim top honors in the annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition.
Each student was allowed to use one static PowerPoint slide with a focus on effectively explaining their research in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Students were evaluated by a panel of judges from Texas Tech and the Lubbock community.
After individual heats, competitors advanced to the final round.
The winners were:
- First place – Cassandra Schmitt, who is pursuing a master's degree in the Department of Environmental Toxicology. Her topic was “Exploring Organophosphate Insecticide Exposure in Zebrafish.”
- Second place – Madhav Dhakal, a doctoral student in the Department of Plant and Soil Science. His thesis topic was “Trade-off between forage improvement and water use for grass-alfalfa system.”
- Third place – Armando Elizalde Velazquez, a doctoral student in the Department of Environmental Toxicology. His topic was “Microplastics ‘an invisible threat.'”
- People's Choice – Velazquez was honored for the same thesis.
“The Three-Minute Thesis Competition is aimed at giving students an opportunity to practice telling people what they do and why it's important,” said Graduate School Dean Mark Sheridan.
“The type of work that research universities do is often questioned about why it's important and what impact it has on society. Providing our students an opportunity to practice those kind of skills, as the people who will be working in universities and other parts of the economic sector, means they'll be able to communicate what we do and why it's important in much better fashion.”
