BANGI: Just one static slide and three minutes to present a PhD thesis that comprises of minimum four years of research work. That is what a 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) presenter has to do to win this competition.
Although the presentation is intended for lay audience, the research work should not be[ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3,5″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ] trivialised and should include problem statement, methods, results and impact. It is certainly not an easy task.
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) recently had their university level 3MT competition, organised by their Graduate Centre, chaired by Dr Ashinida Aladdin.
In her opening remarks, she stated the importance of communication skills among researchers, especially in sharing their research ideas with a wider audience. She also stressed the importance of soft skills among graduates and that the Graduate Centre actively engages their graduate students in a number of non-academic activities.
UKM grouped their candidates in three clusters, namely engineering; social science; and science and technology with 18 candidates presenting a wide range of interesting research topics. The topics ranged from financial policies to shariah compliance in financial institutes, various applications for biomass, dental fillings, air control, cancer research, software development, prisoners’ rights, obesity, and English language modules among others.
The candidate who bagged the first prize and who will represent UKM at the national level hailed from Institute for System Biology, Nor Afiqah Aleng@Mohamad. First and second runner ups were Ahmad Zainal Abidin from Faculty of Economy and Management and Mohamed M. M. Aboras from Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment respectively.
“Participating in 3MT competition was one of the most precious moment during my PhD studies. It gave me the ability to communicate and express to others including experts and non-experts, a skill all graduate should have”, said Nor Afiqah.
Zainal Abidin who is used to giving lectures and presentations thought it would be the same experience to speak at 3MT. He took part in the competition after being forced by his supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Zakiah Muhammaddun Mohamed.
“I realised that 3MT is actually more challenging! Not just to remove all the jargon in order to make people in different field to understand, the 180 seconds time frame is considered a nightmare for people who is used to speaking like me”, said Zainal.
The third runner up, Mohamed Aboras echoed the same sentiments shared by his peers and said 3MT is unique compared to international conferences, scientific seminars, talks and lectures and pushed his limits in communicating to the public.
Mooted by the University of Queensland in 2008, the competition is held in over 200 universities worldwide for PhD students. Malaysian universities have also taken up the challenge and it is carried out in almost all universities and the national winner gets to compete at the international level.
UKM invited Dr Mahaletchumy Arujanan from Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre as the head of jury and the other jury members were Tuan Muhamad Helmi Abd Majid from Astro Awani, Prof Dr Baharudin Omar, former Dean at Faculty of Health Science, UKM and Dr Jaysuman Bin Pusppanathan from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
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