The Graduate School is hosting the fifth annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition during Graduate Research Appreciation Day (GRAD) on April 4. The 3MT competition challenges doctoral students to communicate the significance of their research projects to an educated, non-specialist audience in just three minutes. The nine finalists for the UMD competition will present live on April 4 from 11:30-12:30 pm in the Charles Carroll Room of the Stamp Student Union.
The finalists for the 2018 contest are:
- Brooke Fowler, Communication, "Putting the community back into community policing: Relationship building at the community level"
- Debdatta Sinha Roy, Business and Management, "Improve Decision Making for Utility Companies"
- Yuhan Rao, Geographical Sciences, "Greedy plants suffer from drought due to overusing soil water"
- Pravrutha Raman, Biological Sciences, "Establishment and maintenance of gene silencing"
- Kelsey Gray, Bioengineering, "Mechanobiological Response of Human Brain Endothelium: Role of Cell Contractility in Tight Junction Expression"
- Dalia Ornelas Huerta, Physics, "When photos meet strongly interacting atoms"
- Fathola Salehi, Chemical Physics, "Laser Driven Particle Acceleration"
- George Banis, Bioengineering, "Sampling and Sensing Pancreatic Juices"
The judges of the campus competition will be: Linda Clement, Vice President for Student Affairs, University of Maryland; Marlene Feldman, Member, University of Maryland Board of Trustees; Marsha Guenzler-Stevens, Director, Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland; Alene Moyer, Professor, Department of English, University of Maryland; Ray Phaneuf, Professor and Chair, Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland; Katherine Russel, Associate Dean, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland. Marsha Guenzler-Stevens will also serve as the contest emcee. The winner of the UMD competition will go on to represent the university in the worldwide 3MT competition sponsored by Universitas 21, a global network of research universities. UMD representatives have been highly successful in the past in this competition, winning both the first prize and People’s Choice awards in 2014 and 2017, and the People’s Choice Award in 2015.