Photo: Courtesy
Metropolis Report–
Can you imagine how strenuous it is to condense the work you have assiduously accomplished for years into just a 3-minute presentation? Atia Amin, a PhD student in Human Genetics, has mastered this arduous task.
It was last April that she won top honours at McGill University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition for graduate students. Two months after it, she stood first at the 3MT Eastern Regional Finals, held virtually at the University of New Brunswick.
On November 2, Atia represented McGill at the national finals at Montreal’s Centre Sheraton as part of the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS).
The 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) is an annual research competition that challenges graduate students to communicate their research and its significance in three minutes or less. No props are allowed here; students can only use one static slide and their storytelling abilities.
Since the first 3MT competition at the University of Queensland in Australia in 2008, the concept has spread worldwide, with more than 600 universities and research institutions in 65 countries hosting annual competitions. McGill held its first yearly 3MT competition in 2012, organised by SKILLSETS in Teaching and Learning Services, in collaboration with Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies.
“The challenges are different based on if it is in-person or virtual,” Amin says.
“For the in-person competition, I enjoy communicating with the audience directly. I can change my expression, body language and pace of my talk based on the responses I get from the audience, which helps me engage with them. But in the virtual platform, it’s difficult to do so as you don’t see the audience.”
