Three Minute Thesis (3MT)
Join us online for the 2020 Kingston 3MT. Details coming soon.
Kingston University is excited to be hosting this event for a fourth time. All are welcome to watch our finalists present their research topic in just 180 seconds... a tall order for a PhD thesis of tens of thousands of words! We hope you can join us to hear some of the fantastic research our students are doing, and see the breadth and impact it has.
A judging panel of experts from within Kingston and the local community will listen carefully and decide on Kingston's winner, but the online audience will also get a chance to vote for a people's choice winner! The winner of the Kingston 3MT will be put forward to the national semi final (also online) and if selected will be invited to present at the 3MT UK final at the Vitae International Researcher Development Conference in Birmingham on 14 September 2020.
More about the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) is a worldwide academic competition which challenges PhD students to present their research topic and its significance in a captivating and compelling way to a lay audience, in no more than 180 seconds and with the help of a single static visual aid. Presentations must be brief but not superficial, simple yet content-rich, with competitors sharing their expertise confidently, without jargon, in an engaging and entertaining way.
Started by the University of Queensland in 2008, the 3MT competition has grown into a global initiative involving universities and institutions from around the world.
3MT is more than an academic competition for research students. It makes science more accessible to sponsors, stakeholders, and ultimately, to a global audience. It is an excellent way of bridging the gap between academia and the general public. The ability to convey subject-specific knowledge in simple, straightforward language is also an essential skill for anyone who works in a multidisciplinary research team. 3MT training, and the competition itself, is a fun way to pass on those vital skills to research students and future scholars.
3MT at Kingston University
In 2016, Kingston University joined a prestigious list of UK Universities taking part in the 3MT competition, with a competition taking place in the SEC faculty. From 2017, the competition was rolled out to all faculties. Participants are selected after an initial round and given the opportunity to take part in a one-day workshop which provided personalised training for the 3MT competition.
During the workshop, students work as a group on their storylines, visual aids and delivery of their 3MT presentations. Participants take it in turns to perform in front of their peers. Their performance is filmed and then commented on by the group, in a supportive and fun environment. This helps them develop storytelling skills many did not know they had.
- Find out more about 3MT at Kingston University.
- See an overview of the training workshop.
3MT Semi-finalists 2019
Matthias Pilz (First place)
Thesis title: Game-Theoretic Approaches for Smart Prosumer Communities: Storage Scheduling and Energy Sharing.
Project summary: Developing approaches which allow the wide-spread integration of renewable energy into the power grid. The focus is on the interaction between households and the energy company.
Fatemia Mohamedi (Runner up)
Thesis title: The role of ATMIN transcript variants in pancreatic cancer and DNA repair.
Project summary: Using a specialised gene editing technique, in order to find a better treatment for pancreatic cancer, which is predicted to cause 111,500 annual deaths by 2025 in EU.
Cameron Robertson (Runner up and People's Choice Winner)
Thesis title: The Scope and limitation of DOSY, 2D NMR, qNMR and hyphenated NMR techniques to identify and quantify biologically active compounds in the Stratum corneum
Project summary: Development and validation of a new, automated diagnostic tool that uses one tube for several different types of common experiments, ranging from health applications to industry and pharmaceuticals.
Thi Nguyen
Thesis title: Information uncertainty, Real Earnings Management and Accrual Earnings Management.
Project summary: Testing the performance of widely used models to detect managers' manipulation behaviour (i.e. to change readers' impression about financial reporting performance).
Ivana Rozic
Thesis title: Does size matter? A comparative study of earnings management across small, medium, large private and listed companies in the UK.
Project summary: Aims to contribute to earnings management research by exploring earnings manipulations of annual reported earnings amongst small, medium and large private firms versus PLCs in the UK.
Jake Shelley
Thesis title: Anti-Doping for the 21st century and beyond.
Project summary: Using the athlete voice to inform new anti-doping strategies. Interviews and surveys will inform new evidence-based interventions and education initiatives to foster a culture of clean sport.
Juan Soon
Thesis title: Corporate Social Responsibility in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.
Project summary: To explore the types of motivation and obstacle pertaining to corporate social responsibility in small and medium-sized enterprises of Malaysia.
3MT Semi-finalists 2017
Neha Prasad Ainsworth
Thesis title: From anabolic steroids to research chemicals: Exploring the substance use culture in the gym-going population.
Project summary: Why do people use performance enhancing drugs? What do they do? Are they as harmful as people think they are? Neha explores these questions, and many more, through my research – by talking to the community and healthcare providers. The end goal is to gain more knowledge for harm reduction purposes.
Lucky Cullen
Thesis title: Characterising the emergence of antibiotic resistance.
Project summary: Antimicrobial resistance is a significant global threat. A major focus has been the development of new drugs; however, we have yet to understand the evolution of resistance. To enable this, we devised the novel Resistance Evolution Growth Plate which facilitated the generation of highly resistant bacteria in just three days.
Mohamed Habib
Thesis title: Retinal Image Analysis: Learning from the Past.
Project summary: Retinal scans of the eye can indicate early signs of diabetic retinopathy, one of the leading causes of blindness worldwide. Automated detection of these symptoms can assist doctors in identifying these symptoms. My project seeks to improve the accuracy of automated detection of these symptoms from retinal scans.
Tim Gooding
Thesis title: Foundational Forces of Trade: Experiments using Agent-Based Models.
Project summary: We know groups of people are shaped by emergence. This research seeks to understand the emergent forces arising from people interacting in the market economy and how these forces are shaping society.
Fredericka HH Mitchell
Thesis title: Shining a light on bovine salmonellosis: development of a LAMP.
Project summary: Salmonellosis can kill calves in under 48 hours, while our current diagnostics can take up to a week to diagnose the disease. We aim to reduce this time to under an hour, pen-side to the herd. This will increase animal welfare and reduce the impact of salmonellosis on the farmer.
Elina Mitrofanova
Thesis title: Behavioural Reasoning Behind Extreme Dieting Practices in Fashion Models.
Project summary: Orthorexia is an unhealthy obsession with healthy eating. The aims of this project are to explore individuals' experiences of this restrained eating practice, better define what it actually is (eating disorder or a combination of obsessive compulsive features), and potentially design a scale to measure this phenomenon.
