Open Mic, Ticking Clock: 2023 UF 3MT® Winners

Posted: November 6, 2023

On Wednesday, November 1, 2023, ten intrepid University of Florida doctoral students took up the challenge of boiling down their dissertation research to a mere 180-second pitch in UF’s tenth annual 3MT Three Minute Thesis® finals competition at the Reitz Union Chamber on campus.

Founded in 2008 by the University of Queensland in Australia, 3MT® cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills by challenging them to recap their research in a mere three minutes, in ways that engage a nonacademic, nonspecialist audience. For a sense of proportion, a typical 80,000-word Ph.D. dissertation would take nine hours to present. Imagine squeezing that into about half of one percent of that time!

3MT® contestants compete for cash prizes: $1,000 (first place), $600 (second place), and $400 (third place).

The Top Three

Left to right: Dean Nicole Stedman, 2023 UF 3MT® winners Faith Aiya, Luis Torres, Xiaoyi Tian, and Associate Dean Judy Traveis

Complex topics and close competition raised the stakes among this year’s UF contestants, who yielded three winners.

First place went to Ph.D. student Luis Torres (Geological Sciences, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, pictured left), who presented on his dissertation topic, Fossil Record Fixes: Preservational Biases in Echinoids and Mollusks.

Second place went to Ph.D. student Xiaoyi Tian (Human-Centered Computing, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering, pictured left), who presented on her dissertation topic, Designing for Children to Build Conversational Apps.

Third place went to Ph.D. student Faith Aiya (Food and Resource Economics, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, pictured left), who presented on her dissertation topic, Shifting Food Lifestyle Patterns Among Food Consumers, 2020-2022.

Ten Finalists

Cream of the crop: UF’s ten 2023 3MT® finalists — out of the 65 entrants at the starting line

This year’s stellar finalists, culled from a pool of 65 entrants, included Ph.D. students...

• Adaeze Anamege (Epidemiology, College of Public Health and Health Professions College of Medicine), Does Prenatal Smoking Exposure Moderate the Risk of ADHD in ART-Conceived Children?
• Yi-Hua Chiang (Pharmaceutical Sciences College of Pharmacy), Model informed drug development of mitragynine to predict dose selection, potential drug interaction, and beyond.
• Justina Dacey (Soil, Water and Ecosystem Sciences, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences), Nitrogen's Journey Through an Estuary.
• Laura Falceto Font (Biomedical Sciences – Cancer Biology, College of Medicine), Improving Immunotherapy Outcomes with Genetically Modified Hematopoietic Stem Cells.
• Anuska Narayanan (Geography, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences), Unmasking the Killer: AI Forecasting for Safer Futures.
• Tyler Nesbit (Family, Youth and Community Sciences, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences), Exploring the Role of Mindfulness and Spirituality in Addressing Disparities in Maternal Healthcare.
• Elizabeth Volpe (Civil Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering), How Can AI-Generated Workplace Imagery Inform the Design of More Inclusive Engineering Spaces?

3MT® Teamwork

Dr. Nicole L.P. Stedman (Associate Provost and Dean, Graduate School) opened and closed the event with enthusiastic remarks.

The daunting challenge of choosing winners fell to judges Dr. Jeanna Mastrodicasa (Chief Operating Officer, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences), Dr. Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach (Associate Provost and Senior Advisor to the President for Academic Excellence), Dr. Evangeline Tsibris Cummings (Senior Assistant Provost and Director of UF Online), and Dr. Judy Traveis (Associate Dean for Student Affairs, Graduate Student Success Center, Graduate School).

Dr. Murielle Gammons (Director, Office of Graduate Student Support and Engagement, Graduate School) hosted the event. Kimone Simmons (Education and Training Specialist, Office of Graduate Professional Development, Graduate School) served as timekeeper. UF 3MT® chair Caroline Reeg (Education and Training Specialist, Office of Graduate Professional Development, Graduate School) coordinated the competition.

Learn More...

For more details online about UF’s yearly 3MT® competition, click here: 3MT Three Minute Thesis® at UF.