March 26, 2019, by Lisa Chin

1st Call: 3 Minute Thesis Competition

This is posted on behalf of Dr Jiin Woei Lee and Dr Tissa Chandesa, Research Training Development Managers. 


An 80,000 word PhD thesis would take 9 hours to present. Their time limit… 3 minutes.

First developed by the University of Queensland in 2008, the Three Minute Thesis competition (3MT®) challenges research students to communicate the significance of their projects to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes. The 3MT contestant must condense their research into a brief, engaging presentation for a non-specialist audience, using a single static presentation slide. The aim is to help research students develop their academic, presentation, and research communication skills.

Following a successful launch in 2013, the U21 3MT 2019 competition will pit the leading presenters from each U21 member university against one another. Each participating member will first hold their own internal 3MT competition to select a local winner who will then be put forward via video submission for the U21 final, to be judged by an international panel consisting of industry and academic professionals. Therefore the winner of the face-to-face round in University of Nottingham Malaysia will progress to the tri-campus round to compete against the UK and China campuses via video submission. The video of the overall winner will represent the entire University of Nottingham at the U21 Final.

Not only will students benefit from this experience, but members have the opportunity to showcase their research and researchers throughout the network, as well as open doors to new collaborations and networks for both researchers and supervisors. Active Doctoral candidates who have successfully passed their confirmation review (including thesis under submission) are eligible to participate in the U21 3MT competition.

A compulsory briefing for those who are interested in entering the competition will be held on Monday 13 May 2019 at 2-4pm in H1B13. To register your interest, please click on the following link: https://moodle.nottingham.ac.uk/mod/tutorialbooking/view.php?id=3544109. Several peer review feedback sessions will then be held up till the date of the competition. During these sessions, participants will have the opportunity to practice their 3 minute presentations and will be given feedback on elements they can improve on. This year, the competition will be held on Wednesday 26 June 2019.

In the meantime if you would like to gain a greater understanding of the 3MT competition, please visit the Three Minute Thesis website: https://threeminutethesis.uq.edu.au/. The specific category we belong to is: https://threeminutethesis.uq.edu.au/U21. To view examples of winning presentations from other universities that host the competition, please visit: https://threeminutethesis.uq.edu.au/watch-3mt.

More information comprising dates and times will be confirmed nearer to the time of the competition.

Looking forward to your participation.


For any queries, please email us at graduateschool@nottingham.edu.my.

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