The 2023 3MT Experience
About the 3MT Competition
The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition developed by The University of Queensland (UQ) challenges Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates to showcase their research to a non-specialist audience in three minutes and using only one slide.
Each participating School/Institute within Western Sydney University (WSU) will hold their own selection to nominate a representative to compete in the WSU-level 3MT Competition. The successful finalist will then proceed to represent WSU at the Asia-Pacific 3MT Competition. Read more here.
2023 Representative from The MARCS Institute
The MARCS Institute held its round of 3MT contest on 4 July 2023. The winner, Poorani Vijayakumar (PhD Candidate), represented the Institute at the university-level 3MT Competition on 23 August 2023.
Poorani presented her research to a diverse group of audience comprising staff and students from across the university. Her work—Let the rhythm speak for you: Investigating language rhythm—received positive feedback from the audience.
The Institute is proud of Poorani’s achievement and below is an interview about her 3MT experience from institute- to university-level.
Briefly share your 3MT experience.
I think it was a very memorable experience and ultimately, I am glad that I did it. Competing at the University-level was nerve-wracking, but I felt very supported throughout the whole experience. After my first presentation at the Institute-level of competition, I received feedback from different sources: the judging panel, my supervisors, and fellow PhD candidates. Their comments allowed me to improve on my slide and script.
What motivated you to join and what have you learnt from this experience?
I have always been intrigued by the idea of doing an effective “elevator pitch” type of presentation. The 3MT concept of pitching to a general audience therefore piqued my interest as the dissemination of research in academia is usually targeted at a specialist group.
I did, however, underestimate the amount of preparation time needed for my presentations. With each round of competition, I had to make multiple edits to my script and several practice videos before I eventually filmed the final version.
When I first started drafting my script, I quickly realised that being brief should not come at the expense of clarity. To me, that was the main and constant challenge; I had to ensure that I was not getting too technical while still accurately representing my PhD. The key and final takeaway is to be able to put ideas across concisely without discounting clarity.
Tell us about your research.
My research is about looking at speech perception through language rhythm. What I presented for the 3MT is the first part of my study where I will investigate Tamil as a possible mora-timed language. This will give insights into understanding the universal and language-specific aspects of speech segmentation.
In addition to testing monolinguals in the first part of my PhD project, I am also curious to find out how speech perception will work in bi- and multilinguals. Given that most language research has been focused on monolingual experiences despite an estimated half of the global population speaking more than one language, I am also keen in exploring speech segmentation in participants who knew more than one language to determine if they had an advantage over their monolingual counterparts with processing unfamiliar language rhythm.
Would you recommend participating in the 3MT competition?
It is definitely a valuable and novel experience—so yes, I would recommend.
Watch the 2023 WSU 3MT presentations here.
