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Massey’s Graduate Research School hosted the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition where students had the challenge of sharing their thesis with an audience- in only three minutes. 

The competition, which originated at the University of Queensland in 2008, requires research students to deliver a succinct “elevator pitch” summing up their topic for a non-specialist audience, in just three minutes. 

Muhammad Rehan from the School of Food and Technology was named the overall winner and also took out the people’s choice category with his presentation “Capsule robot- Engineering the gut”.��

Mr Rehan said the competition was an opportunity to summarise his project to a diverse audience: “Mostly, us PhD students keep living in our own bubbles of creativity and eventually we specialise in our fields. The 3MT competition provided me an opportunity to come out of my comfort zone and present my work to a non-specialist audience.”

Dennis Yue from the School of Management came second with his thesis presentation “Leadership through a Chinese lens”.

Judges also gave commendations to Akisi Ravono from the School of Nursing, and Siobhan Healy-Cullen from the School of Psychology for their presentations titled, “Nursing care for people living with Diabetes in Fiji: an indigenous community context” and “Porn Literacy as Pedagogy?” respectively.

Organiser Dr Julia Rayner, Graduate Learning and Development Facilitator, Graduate Research School, Research and Enterprise, says 3MT is a great opportunity for students to clarify their thinking around their research, develop public speaking skills and the confidence this brings, as well as experiencing the satisfaction of sharing their knowledge with a wider audience.

“Normally we would run this competition face to face, but because of COVID we had to move to an online competition. All the competitors did a fantastic job particularly given they had to very quickly learn video editing skills. We were really proud of all of them,” Dr Rayner says. 

The competition has more than 900 universities in over 85 countries participating.