ECU graduate students present research in thesis competition

Dr. Kathy Cox, interim dean of the Graduate School, presents Madison Rose with the Grand Champion award at the 2023 Three Minute Thesis competition. (Contributed photo)

Under pressure of the clock, 35 East Carolina University graduate students presented their research endeavors during the Graduate School’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in November.

Madison Rose ’23, seeking her Master of Science in data science, was named grand champion and will represent ECU in regional competition at the Southern Council of Graduate Schools’ annual conference in Greenville, South Carolina, in March. Her winning presntation was, Machine Learning Techniques to Aid Breast Cancer Recurrance Prediction.

The Graduate School hosts the competition to allow students to present their research in a public venue, gain skills to be more successful in their future pursuits in their discipline or industry, and practice presenting their research to a non-specialist audience. Dr. Kathy Cox, interim dean of the Graduate School, said the competition features the outstanding research being conducted by master’s degree and doctoral students.

“Allowing new students to see the research and public presentations of continuing students, we show the new students where they are going — on to becoming a scholar or a scientist with a focused expertise in their field,” Cox added. “We were very excited to see the number of participants increase to pre-COVID levels. We also had students from departments that don’t usually send students to this competition, so it was really exciting to see more departments encouraging their students to participate.”

This marks the sixth 3MT event at ECU. The first 3MT was at the University of Queensland in 2008. Today, the competition includes 600 universities in 65 countries.

The competition featured three heats in which students presented their research using non-technical language and one static slide. They were judged on comprehension and content, and engagement. Researchers with the top two scores from each heat presented again in the finals.

Finalists included:

• Rachel Bruns, engineering, presenting: Pinched Nerves: A Pilot’s Worst Enemy.
• Skyler DeWall, biology, presenting: Investigation of the Soil Seedbank in a Long-term Mowing and Drainage Experiment.
• Michael Reynolds, biology, presenting: Parental Care Response to Water Level Change in the Mimic Poison Dart Frog.
• Amy Rogers, sociology, presenting: Healthy Relationships: Examining Health at Late Midlife and Old Age Loneliness.
• Madison Rose, computer science, presenting: Machine Learning Techniques to Aid Breast Cancer Recurrence Prediction.
• Drew Theobald, pharmacology and toxicology, presenting: Kinin B1 Receptor: Emerging Target for Neuroinflammation in COVID-19 Infection.

Rose earned grand champion, Theobald placed second and Burns third, while DeWall won the People’s Choice award. The Department Cup was awarded to the biology department for having the three highest scoring presenters during the first-round heats.

Rose said presenting during the 3MT competition allowed her to look at the bigger picture of her research and its purpose.

“Looking at the research from a more generalized view was refreshing and helped me refocus on my research goals,” Rose said. “I think this also helped me become more comfortable speaking about my research to an audience, which I hope will help me when I defend my thesis.”

Rose said she wanted to avoid being too technical and focus more on the motivation for the research she was presenting. Her research mentor, Dr. Nic Herndon, set up practice talks for the students in the lab to practice and receive feedback from the other students prior to the competition.

“I thought about what I would tell someone hearing about my work for the first time and developed my talk from there,” Rose said. “I tried to keep my slide simple so that people could focus on what I was saying rather than trying to read my slide.”