Three Minute Thesis

Mason doctoral students compete in annual Three-Minute Thesis competition

Colleen Rich — Thu, 11 May 2023 19:29:15 +0000

Mason doctoral students compete in annual Three-Minute Thesis competition Colleen Rich Thu, 05/11/2023 - 15:29

On March 31, 2023, ��AV was home to the seventh annual Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference and Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition, hosted by the Graduate and Professional Student Association (GAPSA), Graduate Student Life, and the Graduate Division.

From left, Three-Minute Thesis winners Patricia Sinclair, Steven Zhou, Amy Rose, and Doreen Peters. Photo provided

The conference showcased scholarly, research, and creative works from Mason graduate students across disciplines through posters, oral presentations, and creative, visual, and performing arts.

The opening panel “Globalized Society, Complex Issues: The Role of Interdisciplinary Research” set the theme for the daylong conference by discussing the critical role of interdisciplinary research in a globalized society and how to better engage interdisciplinary research due to the need for collaboration in an ever-shrinking world. Eight oral presentation sessions and one poster session followed, with a total of 65 Mason’s graduate students presenting their research.

“Becoming aware and understanding how your research might impact other disciplines is a unique opportunity,” said Emily Crawford, MPP candidate and vice president of Mason Square for GAPSA. “Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference provides students with the chance to share outside their discipline and cultivate networks far beyond the classroom.”

The day culminated in the 3MT® Competition finals, where 10 PhD candidates from the Carter School of Peace and Conflict Resolution, College of Engineering and Computing, College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the College of Science competed. This year’s winners are:

First Place: Steven Zhou (CHSS): “Measuring Profiles and Patterns of Leadership Behavior”
Second Place: Amy Rose (COS): “Hyperspectral Signature Development for Aircraft-Induced Clouds from Aerial and Ground-Based Sensors”
Third Place: Doreen Peters (COS): “Using Dragonfly Exuviae as a No-Kill Approach to Monitor Mercury along the Freshwater Potomac River”
People’s Choice: Patricia Sinclair (COS), “Energy and Aging: The Estrogen Connection”

“The 3MT competition is an amazing opportunity to hone a unique and valuable skill: translating your research to a general audience in an engaging and informative format,” Zhou said. “I've found that the challenge of condensing a thesis into three minutes tested my understanding of the topic in a unique way that prepares me for bringing research into the public sphere.”

Continuing into its eighth year of competition, Mason’s 3MT joins nearly 1,000 other universities from more than 80 countries; the competition originated at Australia’s University of Queensland in 2008.

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Three-Minute Thesis competition helps students distill research into short, accessible pitches

Colleen Rich — Wed, 20 Apr 2022 17:26:24 +0000

Three-Minute Thesis competition helps students distill research into short, accessible pitches Colleen Rich Wed, 04/20/2022 - 13:26

From left, the Three-Minute Thesis winners Adebanke Loveth Adebayo, Aisha Yusuf, and Jamil Pugh. Photo by Pam Shepherd/Provost's Office

��AV’s Three-Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition challenges graduate students to present their dissertation or thesis research in just three minutes with the help of one visual aid.

Eleven Mason students took the challenge following the Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference on April 8.

First place, and $1,000, went to Randy Jamil Pugh, a PhD candidate in the Department of Rehabilitation Science at Mason’s College of Health and Human Services.

His presentation, “The Effect of Overground Locomotor Training on Walking Turns in Parkinson’s Disease,” was one piece of a larger Department of Rehabilitation Science research project.

Though Pugh said the process of doing the research and condensing it into a three-minute talk that was relatable to people outside his department was “a joy,” there was a broader goal.

“It’s not just to do the research and come up with these amazing findings in the lab,” he said, “but to get our findings out there and connect with people in our department as well as across disciplines to make a real-world impact.”

The interdisciplinary approach to this competition was very important, Pugh said.

“Seeing and hearing different points of view and putting those different knowledge spaces together to help people with Parkinson's disease and how they walk is really exciting,” he said.

Adebanke Loveth Adebayo, who received $500 for her third-place presentation of her research on “The Sociocultural Perception of Climate Change and Its Effects on Maternal and Prenatal Health Outcomes Among Nigerian Women in West Africa,” said the competition was challenging.

“It’s really hard to fit everything that you’ve been doing for the last couple of months or years into three minutes, so it takes a lot of patience with yourself to realize the essential piece the audience needs to know,” she said.

That’s why Aisha Yusuf, awarded $750 for second place, participated in the ��AV Toastmasters Club, in order to learn and practice communication and leadership skills.

“Being a member has really helped me when it comes to speaking to audiences, working on my vocal variety, and body language. I used the lessons I learned from Toastmasters to practice for my presentation,” Yusuf said.

Yusuf said her research on “Ethnic Identity and the Prevalence of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Africa” is significant, as more than 200 million women and girls have undergone genital mutilation. Doing the research and putting it out there will create more awareness about the problem and how to solve it, she said.

“Eliminating FGM is also part of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in promoting gender equality, so disseminating the research for people to see and learn from will help make the world a better place,” Yusuf said.

The competition was hosted by the Office of the Provost, and the four judges featured a combination of community professionals and Mason faculty and staff.

“The Three-Minute Thesis competition helps every student who enters, not just the winners, learn to share the significance of their work with the public," said Bethany Usher, Mason's associate provost for undergraduate education and a judge at this year's competition. "Communicating their research to a general audience is a valuable skill that will help them get jobs, convince people to fund them, and entertain relatives at Thanksgiving. For many students, it’s also a chance to step back and see their work from a different perspective, giving them renewed confidence in what they are accomplishing.“

The 3MT competition originated in 2008 at Australia’s University of Queensland. Mason’s competition joins those at more than 900 universities across 85 countries.

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Three Minute Thesis

Showcasing solutions to problems that matter

Martha Bushong — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 19:39:04 +0000

Showcasing solutions to problems that matter Martha Bushong Wed, 03/23/2022 - 15:39

The College of Engineering and Computing (CEC) has a long history of sending competitors to the final round of ��AV’s Three Minute Thesis competition. Since its inception in 2017, more than a dozen PhD students have used the competition to present their research by explaining its relevance in three minutes with one slide to a panel of judges. This year two students, Aamir Ahmad, (Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering) and Joseph Majdi (Department of Bioengineering) will advance to the final round and compete at the Mason Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference on Friday, April 8, 2022. Both students’ research addresses challenges that affect human health and wellness in vastly different ways.

Aamir Ahmad joined the Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering in 2019 as a PhD student. As a member of the Sustainable Geotransportation/Geoenvironmental Infrastructure (SGI) Research Group, his research seeks to understand how to predict the long-term flux of a group of man-made fluorinated organic chemicals called per-polyfluoroaklkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS are found in a variety of domestic products including food packaging, carpets, upholstery, water-repellent paints, and non-stick cookware. When these products are discarded and arrive in landfills the PFAS may seep into groundwater and cause contamination at levels that can cause disease. The research aims to discover better protective barriers that will keep the contaminants from appearing in the groundwater and other places that would endanger humans.

Instead of looking at environmental factors that affect human health, bioengineering PhD student Joseph Majdi’s research focuses on developing a better way to use a system called electrical muscle stimulation (EMS). His research aims to enhance EMS so that paralyzed muscles fatigue less and battery requirements for assistive devices are reduced.

He says, "Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) is often used for rehabilitation in movement disorders and in assistive devices such as exoskeletons. However, EMS can rapidly cause muscle fatigue, which limits the induced force and becomes unstable. Currently, there is no reliable, real-time indicator for EMS-induced muscle fatigue.” Majdi believes that functional muscle physiology associated with muscle fatigue and fatigue recovery can be inferred from ultrasound imaging. His thesis investigates a system for use in a hybrid walking exoskeleton that can alternate between EMS-driven and electrical motor-driven walking, depending on the muscle's fatigue/recovery state.

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3MT competition recognizes six graduate students this year

Colleen Rich — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 15:27:46 +0000

3MT competition recognizes six graduate students this year Colleen Rich Tue, 06/29/2021 - 11:27

The final round of ��AV’s fifth annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition was held virtually on April 9. From this year’s 13 finalists, the judges chose three first-place winners—two doctoral students from the Department of Bioengineering in the Volgenau School of Engineering and a PhD student from the Department of Psychology in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences—and three second-place winners.

Sara Hadad

Mason bioengineering PhD student Sara Hadad spoke on “Predicting Brain Aneurysm Growth,” explaining what an aneurysm is and describing the artificial intelligence (AI) computer model she is working on that could help predict which aneurysms are dangerous and need immediate treatment.

Hadad said she wanted to participate in the competition because, as a PhD student, she is often asked about her research.

“It can be quite challenging to explain my research,” said Hadad, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the Isfahan University of Technology in her native Iran. “So I thought this competition would give me an opportunity to practice explaining my research in a short time to nonspecialists.”

Hadad came to Mason to work with Juan R. Cebral, who leads Mason’s Computational Hemodynamics Lab and is a leading expert in this field. She was also interested in the campus culture.

“As an international student, being in an international-friendly environment is important to me,” Hadad said. “And Mason is very good at making students from other countries feel comfortable.”

While bioengineering doctoral student Shriniwas Patwardhan wasn’t worried about the public speaking aspect of the competition—he has a theater background, he did feel challenged to explain the work he does without using jargon when presenting “The Senses and My Hand: An Investigation for Multi-Sensory Feedback for Prosthetic Control.”

Shriniwas Patwardhan

“I think that being able to communicate your work to a broad audience is almost as important as being able to do the work itself,” Patwardhan said of his reasons for entering the competition. “If I have truly understood the problem at hand, I should be able to explain it to an audience with any expertise level within any given timeframe.”

Patwardhan, who is working with Mason bioengineering professor Siddhartha Sikdar in Mason’s Biomedical Imaging Lab, came to Mason to specifically to work with prosthetics.

“Mason offered me a chance to follow my passion of working closely with prosthetics and more broadly with all types of interesting questions in rehabilitation science,” said Patwardhan, who has BE in electrical engineering from the University of Pune and an MS in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara. “I decided to join my current lab because it offered me the freedom and opportunities to follow my research interests wherever they may lead me.”

Clinical psychology PhD student Paige Trojanowski, who spoke on “Preventing Eating Disorders in Teen Girls with Type 1 Diabetes,” explained how disordered eating can lead to medical complications for teens with Type 1 diabetes and described a prevention program she developed and tested.

Paige Trojanowski

Trojanowski is in the sixth year of Mason’s Clinical Psychology PhD program and is preparing to start her clinical internship at the University of Florida in the Pediatric Psychology Track.

“I will work mainly with children and adolescents with medical conditions—such as Type 1 diabetes, cancer, and cystic fibrosis—and their families,” said Trojanowski, who has a BS in neuroscience from Ohio State and MA in psychology from Mason. “I defended my dissertation right before leaving [Virginia] but will be spending significant time writing it up for publication over the next year.”

Trojanowski said she came to Mason to work with Department of Psychology professors Sarah Fischer and Robyn Mehlenbeck.

“Dr. Fischer was conducting research in eating disorders, and I was especially interested in her neuroimaging work,” Trojanowski said. “However, I realized once I started that I did not want to do neuroimaging work, and I fell in love with pediatric psychology and working with kids with medical conditions.”

The second-place winners were writing and rhetoric doctoral student Sarah Johnson, who spoke on “Mortuus et Vivus, Absent et Present: Identifying and Dismantling the Standard English Paradox”; environmental science and public policy doctoral student Chase LaDue, who spoke on “Using Integrative Science to Conserve Asian Elephants”; and education doctoral student Sara Montiel, who spoke on “Exploring the Assets of First-Generation College Students Who Are Children of Immigrants.”

First-place winners were awarded $1,000; second-place winners received $750.

Laurence Bray, associate provost for graduate education at Mason, said the competition has grown each year.

“This year was different as doctoral students had to face additional challenges due to the pandemic, which in most cases resulted in limited research capabilities,” said Bray, who coordinates the event. “It really showed our students’ perseverance and resilience.”

Judging the competition was a combination of scientific community members and Mason faculty and staff: Dulce Carrillo, coordinator of community engagement of Arlington Public Schools; Kimberly Holmes, associate dean for student affairs in Mason’s College of Health and Human Services; Robert Duncan of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research; and Hironao Okahana, associate vice president of research and policy analysis of the Council of Graduate Schools.

Originating in 2008 at Australia’s University of Queensland, 3MT competitions now take place annually at more than 900 universities across 85 countries.

“Having such a strong group of presenters and listening to their work made [this competition] even more special,” Bray said. “I am very proud of all the students who took the time and found the motivation to compete this year.”

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Psychology PhD student wins fourth annual Three Minute Thesis competition

Colleen Rich — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 09:00:21 +0000

Psychology PhD student wins fourth annual Three Minute Thesis competition Colleen Rich Mon, 06/15/2020 - 05:00