The buzz is back with the Graduate School’s annual Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition this spring! Earlier this month, 42 graduate students rocked the stage in front of a live audience all vying for a chance to advance to the final round and win cash prizes.

A panel of esteemed University faculty and postdocs had the challenging task of judging this year’s preliminary event, evaluating students’ presentation skills and research content. If you are unfamiliar with 3MT, it is an annual spectacle where master’s and doctoral students are tasked with condensing their research into a lightning-fast, three-minute presentation with only a single slide. It is an adrenaline-fueled sprint through the world of academia!

Since 2015, the Graduate School has hosted this event, showcasing the power, beauty and brilliance of graduate education at the University. In addition, recent winners of this competition have gone on to compete, and place, in regional 3MT competitions putting the University on the map as a hotbed of intellectual prowess.

We are thrilled to announce this year’s 16 finalists (see below) and cannot wait for the final showdown. The 3MT final round of competition is set to take place on Thursday, April 11, at 7 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Auditorium at the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center. Students, family, faculty and community members are invited to join us and witness firsthand the awe-inspiring brilliance of our scholars. For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be live-streamed via Zoom so please register here on Formstack to receive the information.

Congratulations to the 2024 3MT finalists! Good luck on April 11.

(The finalists below are listed alphabetically by last name.)

Master’s Category:

• Samantha DeTiberiis
  • M.A. Criminal Justice 
  • "What do our phones teach us about incarceration? A social media content analysis"
• Elizabeth Everest 
  • M.S. Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
  • “Sustaining the beating heart of Cambodia: Fisheries management in southeast Asia's largest lake”
• Carolynn Fedarko
  • M.A. Criminal Justice 
  • “Zeroing in on gun violence”
• Shipra Goswami
  • M.S. Biochemistry
  • “May the pericytes be with you: Transport engineers you never knew existed!”
• Abdulwarith Kassim
  • M.S. Chemistry
  • “Chemically recyclable dithioacetal polymers”
• Anthony Michell
  • M.A. History
  • “Pushed to the limit: How the 1998 China floods revolutionized the relationship between China and the natural world”
• Elizabeth Morgan
  • M.S. Teaching History (M.A.T.H.)
  • “Dust in the wind dude: The Owens Valley everywhere except, in the Owens Valley”
• Cathy Silliman
  • M.S. Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology
  • “Winterfat restoration in a changing climate” 

Doctoral Category:

• Francisco Calderon Abullarade
  • Ph.D. History
  • “Creating the Enemy: The origins of the inter-American Cold War in the 1940s”
• Anithakrithi Balaji
  • Ph.D. Biomedical Engineering
  • “Electrifying the fight-or-flight response: Nanosecond electric pulses for neuromodulation “
• Monika Bharti
  • Ph.D. Education - Literacy Studies
  • “Pre-service teachers experiences teaching K-8 Multilingual Students' (MLS) writing”
• Cossette Canovas
  • Ph.D. Clinical Psychology
  • “Identifying predictors of racial trauma to inform treatment development “
• Cody Cris
  • Ph.D. Cell and Molecular Biology
  • “Lighting the way: Tools to prepare for future pandemics”
• Kaashifah
  • Ph.D. Education - Equity, Diversity and Language
  • “Bridging the gaps: Evaluating the intervention programs to overcome academic disparities”
• Noah Nieman
  • Ph.D. Civil and Environmental Engineering
  • “Accelerating bridge construction connections behavior during near fault motions”
• Sanjeevan Pradhan
  • Ph.D. Political Science
  • “Tough sell: Rising powers, domestic legitimation and costly international initiatives”