Lindsay Thornton, a graduate student in physics, was selected as the people's choice and first place winner of Old Dominion's inaugural Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition, held Oct. 24 in the University Theatre.
The 3MT program was first conceptualized by the University of Queensland, Australia, in 2008 and has since gone global. The goal of the competition is for graduate students to develop communication skills by translating their research into a three minute presentation for an audience not trained in their respective fields. The audience in this case was made up of around 100 students, faculty, staff and the general public.
The ODU competition was emceed by WHRV's Cathy Lewis, host of the popular public affairs call-in show "HearSay with Cathy Lewis." Presentations were judged by Mary Miller, Downtown Norfolk Council; Jorge Nadal, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District; and Dr. Travis Reeves, Eastern Virginia Medical School and Children's Hospital of the King's Daughters.
The competition was open to ODU graduate students working on their thesis or dissertation research. There were presentations from eleven entrants representing four academic colleges. Graduate students from the colleges of sciences, engineering and technology, education and business presented on topics ranging from applying artificial intelligence to solve problems in our daily lives to developing better criteria for admitting students to graduate programs in speech pathology.