Three Minute Thesis Competition

The third annual Tufts Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition took place in a virtual format this year, but featured the same enthusiasm and innovative research as previous in-person competitions. The 3MT Competition challenges graduate students to present their research, its significance, and their methodology in under three minutes with the aid of one slide. Fellow students, faculty, staff, and friends joined on Zoom to support this year’s participants.

The 2020 contest featured 10 graduate students from the School of Engineering, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the Friedman School of Nutrition. Student presentations are ranked from first through third place, as judged by a panel of faculty members, and a people’s choice winner is selected by those in the audience. The winners of the 2020 3MT Competition were:

First Place
Priyanka Ram
Department of Biomedical Engineering
“Repurposing Potassium Channel Blockers to Prevent Metastasis in Triple Negative Breast Cancer”

Second Place
Girija Bahety
Department of Economics
“Mobile Money and Savings in Tanzania”

Third Place
Olukunle Owolabi
Department of Mechanical Engineering
“Power Outage Risk Interconnection - Relationship with Social and Environmental Critical Risk Indicators”

People’s Choice
Mahshid Iraniparast
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program
“Ultrabright Fluorescent Silica Nanoparticles for Early Detection of Cancer”

In addition to cash prizes for these participants, the first-place winner was invited to represent Tufts University in the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools’ (NAGS) 3MT Competition. Biomedical engineering MS student Priyanka Ram received an honorable mention at this competition, which featured winners from universities across New England and eastern Canada.

This year’s judges included Professor and Dean of Graduate Engineering Education Karen Panetta, Research Assistant Professor Giuseppina Matzeu, Assistant Professor Srivalleesha Mallidi, Associate Professor Eric Tytell, and Matt Casey, Associate Director of Graduate Career Services.

Tufts 3MT Competition is sponsored by the AS&E Graduate Student Council, the Graduate Dean’s Office in the School of Engineering, and the Dean’s Office in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. If you’d like to learn more about the competition, please contact the AS&E Graduate Student Council at gsc@tufts.edu. See below for the full list of Tufts honorable mentions.

Honorable Mention
Yuexing Hao
Department of Computer Science
“Algorithms for Winning the Information-Imperfection Card Game Gin Rummy”

Shiwei Liang
Friedman School of Nutrition
“Nutrition Data and Visualization Platforms: A Review of Dashboards and their Quality Metrics”

Yerin Park
Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development
“An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Investigation of Associations between Personal and Social Identity Among White, Heterosexual, Cisgender Young Adults in the US”

Samer Nour Eddine
Department of Psychology
“Towards a Neurally Plausible Model of Word Recognition”

Xiaoyang Ji
Department of Economics
“Language and Trade”

YiFan Zuo
Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development
“How Emergent Adults Represent Parent Voices and Roles in Their Narratives of Salient Experiences and Transitions”