March 13, 2025
Doctoral Researchers Connect Beyond Disciplines in 3MT Championship
by Sarah Bender
Ten doctoral students shared their complex research and made connections across disciplines during the championship round of Carnegie Mellon University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, held Tuesday, March 11 in McConomy Auditorium of the Cohon University Center. This year’s finalists, who hailed from departments across campus, were challenged to present their theses for a general audience in under three minutes.
First place was awarded to Vivian Shen from the Robotics Institute. Second place went to Junwon Seo from Materials Science and Engineering. Third place was awarded to Huda Usman from Chemical Engineering, who also won the People’s Choice Award selected by the in-person audience in the auditorium. Justin P. Miner from Mechanical Engineering won the Alumni Choice Award, which was chosen by online votes from alumni watching the livestream.
The event, which is in its tenth year at Carnegie Mellon, started at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has been adopted by over 900 universities across more than 85 countries. Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries Keith Webster, who brought the competition to CMU, served as host of Tuesday’s finals.
Shen, a doctoral student in the School of Computer Science, chose to focus on the broad applications of her research to best connect with a general audience. She spent the first portion of her presentation explaining the importance of virtual reality — the field she works in — and how it can impact people’s lives.
“We focus on very specific, small problems in our research — I think that's true for Ph.D. students everywhere,” she explained. “And we know why our work is important, but other people don't. So I emphasized things that a lot of people in my field will already know implicitly, but maybe aren’t so clear to other people, to show why what we're doing is important.”
Shen’s research explores haptics, designing and testing technologies that create an experience of touch by simulating pressure, weight, and texture for a user. As she outlined in her presentation, her work could impact anyone who uses a device like a cell phone, expanding the available feedback options from simple vibrations to a variety of different physical sensations. The technology also has specialized applications that can lead to advances in various disciplines — for example, through medical and pilot training simulations, or immersive history lessons.
The competition gave Shen the opportunity to connect with other researchers and see where overlap occurs. “I feel like I don't get to interact with too many people outside the School of Computer Science, but there are people working in disciplines like engineering whose work intersects with what we do within SCS,” she said. “3MT reminded me of all the cool research that's happening at CMU, and at the same time, that the problems we're working on are so interdisciplinary. People that I hadn't met before today are often working toward similar goals.”
This was Seo’s third year participating in 3MT, and his first time advancing to the championship. The Ph.D. student from the College of Engineering attributes his win to increased confidence and additional experience — he graduates in two months and has a deeper understanding of his research and how to communicate it than ever before.
Seo centered his presentation around an accessible analogy — that, just as a baker bakes bread by combining dough shapes in an oven, engineers are now able to “bake” complex geometries needed for custom parts used in machinery like rocket engines.
Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing metals, allows Seo to create shapes that weren’t possible before in a cost-effective, environmentally friendly way. The method eliminates unnecessary material waste and offers unique opportunities for refinement. And while his research is complex, he knows the importance of communicating about it in an accessible way so others can understand his work and why it matters.
“Doing great research and sharing that research with the public are completely different things,” he said. “What I’m doing in the lab is important, but it's also important to help a general audience understand the research so they can make use of it. I think that's one of the most important parts of becoming a researcher.”
Usman, also a student from the College of Engineering, has wanted to participate in 3MT for years — and after she proposed her thesis in fall 2024, she knew the time was right. “The more I advanced in the process, the more understanding I had about where my work sits in the field,” she explained. “I knew I was ready to boil my research down in three minutes and find the most important message I could give an audience.”
The message Usman chose is about the importance of microbes, many of which still aren’t fully understood by scientists today. To help solve the mystery, she’s developing a new nanoculture technology to capture different types of bacteria and study them, gaining valuable information about their behaviors.
“Once we have that set up, we can study what the bacteria are doing and how they're doing it,” Usman said. “We can also find out if they're secreting novel antimicrobial compounds — and a lot of them are. These novel antimicrobial agents can combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria and save a lot of lives.”
Miner heard about 3MT through the Libraries’ Tartan Data Research Alliance, launched in fall 2024 to create a community of practice around research data management. He was preparing to propose his thesis this semester and decided 3MT would help him make his ideas more concise and weave a story about the importance of his work into his presentation.
Miner receives funding from NASA for his research, which looks at how 3D printed parts respond to forces that are applied over and over, much like airplane wings or engines will experience in aerospace applications. By studying these parts in practical situations, he is able to gain a better understanding of where weaknesses develop and how to make them more reliable.
3MT gave Miner the chance to share this work with a large audience of alumni from across CMU. “My research captures emergent technology that's very applicable to manufacturing, which is a common area that our alumni work in,” he said. “As a result, it’s clear alumni connected with my presentation and understood the importance of my research.”
Watch the 2025 Three Minute Thesis Championship on YouTube.
2025 Finalists
March 18, 2024
Doctoral Researchers Shine in 3MT Championship
by Sarah Bender
Nine doctoral students explained their complex research and its importance in under three minutes during the championship round of Carnegie Mellon University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, held Thursday, March 14 in Tepper School of Business’s Simmons Auditorium A.
First place was awarded to Benjamin Glaser from Materials Science and Engineering. Second place was awarded to Sampada Acharya, who is studying mechanical engineering. Acharya also received both the People’s Choice Award — selected by the audience in the theater — and the Alumni Choice Award, chosen by online votes from alumni watching the livestream. Third place went to Nicole C. Auvil, who is studying chemistry in the Mellon College of Science.
The event, which is in its ninth year at Carnegie Mellon, started at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has been adopted by over 900 universities across more than 85 countries worldwide. Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries Keith Webster, who brought the competition to CMU, served as host of Thursday’s finals.
Glaser, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering, was excited to tackle the challenge that 3MT presents. He first tried to summarize his research informally for a group of friends after watching last year’s competition — and found that it was even more challenging than he expected.
“I thought it was a very interesting problem, to distill what takes us years just to understand, but then also conveying the importance and magnitude and methods to a general audience in such a short time,” he remembered. “This year when the registration came around I worked very hard to be able to make that connection successfully.”
In his research, Glaser is exploring an advanced material discovery model to create new aluminum alloys with high temperature strength and stability, and low cost and emissions.
“It’s a difficult problem that we need to be able to approach holistically, but I want people to understand that it is feasible,” he said. “In my presentation, I showed something actionable, not just simulations. I’ve already begun to get exciting results.”
Acharya, also from the College of Engineering, said she made such an impact on both in-person and livestream audiences due to the universality of her topic. Her research focuses on creating a device that can collect pathogens from surfaces, with the goal of making infectious places like hospitals less dangerous to visit.
“People don’t want to go to hospitals and then feel sicker — you go there in order to feel better and make others feel better as well,” she explained. “So my research, which addresses this huge gap that no one has really talked about in hundreds of years, spoke to everyone — especially in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which really left its mark on people.”
To be truly successful, Acharya’s research requires collaboration from a variety of fields, and that’s why sharing her work with a campus-wide audience like the one assembled for 3MT was so important to her.
“This is an issue that everyone needs to work together to address — from computer scientists to mechanical engineers to roboticists to people working with artificial intelligence and beyond — and I hope that’s a takeaway from my presentation,” Acharya said. “This interdisciplinary audience is the thing that I really love about CMU. I can inspire them to think about how they can bring their work and their knowledge to try and address this gap.”
Auvil credits her successful presentation in part to her artistic slide design.
“I always try to put a lot of effort into the art side of science communication, which I feel is not given enough attention by a lot of scientists,” she explained. “Graphics and art can draw in people who wouldn’t normally be interested in science, and also help them understand it in a way that words just can’t. Visuals are a universal language; they can convey things that you’ll never be able to convey with words.”
She works with a chemical analysis instrument known as a mass spectrometer, which is essential for everything from testing environmental samples to crime scenes to historic artifacts — but it’s time intensive and expensive, and sometimes even damages samples. Her research has already yielded a new scientific device that attaches to a mass spectrometer to improve this process, which she named the “Super Sniffer” due to the way it detects chemicals emanating from samples, similar to the way a nose can detect chemicals in the air.
“I love the point I’m at now, where we can work on fun applications,” Auvil said. “Every time I talk to people about my work they suggest new ideas — even here at 3MT, today — and that’s why I love opportunities like this. Everyone has their own background that can inform what sort of applications would be important in their life, and not all of those are things that me or my advisor would think about on our own.”
Watch the 2024 Three Minute Thesis Championship on YouTube.
2024 Finalists
March 6, 2023
Doctoral Research Reaches Public in 3MT Championship
by Sarah Bender
Eight doctoral students explained their complex research and its importance in under three minutes during the championship round of Carnegie Mellon University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, held Tuesday, February 28 in the College of Fine Arts' Kresge Theatre.
First place was awarded to Durva Naik from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The People’s Choice Award — selected by the audience in the theater — also went to Naik. Second place was awarded to Maxwell B. Wang, who is studying neural computation and machine learning, and third place went to Brendon Boldt from the Language Technologies Institute. Materials science and engineering student Amaranth Karra was selected as the Alumni Choice Award winner by online votes from alumni watching the livestream.
The event, which is in its eighth year at Carnegie Mellon, started at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has been adopted by over 900 universities across more than 85 countries worldwide. Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries Keith Webster, who brought the competition to CMU, served as host of Tuesday’s finals.
Naik, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering, is researching devices to slowly dispense medication from the villi of the small intestine. She said that the biggest challenge she overcame when writing her award-winning speech was choosing language that was simple enough for a general audience to understand — while still conveying the importance of her work.
“Not many people even know about intestinal villi,” she said. “So knowing that people don’t know about it, I had to find a way to work it into the presentation. I wanted the audience to walk away understanding why these devices are going to completely transform the medical industry.”
Wang agreed that 3MT was an invaluable opportunity to learn to communicate complicated ideas in everyday language. “My Ph.D. program does a very good job training you to become an expert in your material,” he said. “But opportunities like this are a great way to hone your ability to share your work with a general audience.”
His research, which studies how the brain changes states, embodies the interdisciplinary nature of 3MT. The work combines computation, machine learning, and neuroscience expertise from Carnegie Mellon, as well as the skill of clinicians and medical teams at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“I think that this work had a unique advantage in that it was really a tremendous team effort,” he said. “Funneling all of that expertise into this thesis work was a huge part of what made it such an amazing project.”
Participating in 3MT helped clarify a new connection in Boldt’s research, which looks at AI-invented language. When preparing for 3MT, Boldt decided to separate the human and AI sides of understanding emergent language for the first time.
“I didn’t make this distinction in these terms until I was actually writing the script, and I realized it actually made it a lot easier for me to understand as well,” Boldt said. “The opportunity to reframe my work and gain new insights is the whole reason I participated.”
Karra, also from the College of Engineering, has won the Alumni Choice Award two years in a row. By participating, he hopes to inspire the audience with the knowledge that failure is a part of research.
“Research doesn’t involve solving things that are easy,” said Karra, who opened his presentation by highlighting the victims of the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle breakup, including CMU alumna Judith A. Resnik, before diving into his work with new materials for space technology. “The process is about engaging with things that are difficult, that don’t work, and trying to understand why they are failing and how to make them succeed.”
Watch the 2023 Three Minute Thesis Championship on YouTube.
2023 Finalists
Eight doctoral students explained their years of research and its importance in under three minutes during the finals of Carnegie Mellon University's Three Minute Thesis (3MT), held Wednesday in the College of Fine Arts' Kresge Theatre.
First place went to Piyumi Wijesekara from the Department of Biomedical Engineering, second place went to Suzy Li, who is studying architecture in the School of Fine Arts, and third place went to Emma Benjaminson of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. The People's Choice Award — selected by the audience in the theater — went to Mohammad Ayaz Masud, who is studying electrical and computer engineering. Materials science & engineering student Amaranth Karra was selected as the Alumni Choice Award winner by online votes from alumni watching the livestream.
The event, which returned for its seventh year at Carnegie Mellon, after a two-year break due to the pandemic, started at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has been adopted by hundreds of institutions. Keith Webster, the Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries, who brought the competition to CMU, served as host of Wednesday’ finals.
Wijesekara, a doctoral student in the College of Engineering whose research involves engineering mini-lung tissue to study lung biology, lung diseases and targeted therapies attributes her success to the timeliness of her topic. Having an accurate lung model is critical to respond swiftly to public health crises like COVID and makes us better prepared for another pandemic.
“Since I’m doing research on a topic that is relevant at this time, that probably made me stand out to the audience and judges,” Wijesekara said. “We are still in a pandemic and are in dire need of inventing or engineering models to come up with solutions for this pandemic. Since everyone has gone through this tough time, maybe they can relate to this problem more.”
Masud, also from the College of Engineering, is working on a breakthrough memory device that will enable high density storage with minimum energy expenditure. His lab mate encouraged him to compete in 3MT, which he found to be a fun and valuable challenge. After the experience, he encourages other grad students to participate in 3MT.
“It was fun to talk about my research and to get the People’s Choice award feels good, but the biggest reason to participate in 3MT is that you can spend a lot of time thinking about your research not to present to a committee or to professors but to present to a general audience,” said Masud. “That allows you to discover the most important parts of your research and makes it a really enjoyable process.”
Like first-place winner Wijesekara, who overcame her fear of public speaking by practicing her presentation in front of audiences of friends and colleagues, second-place winner Li participated in 3MT to become more comfortable with public speaking, which she says is a valuable skill for PhD students of any discipline.
Li, who presented a talk on her research into creating smarter urban surfaces to bring benefits to climate change, human health and social equity, had previously participated in the 2020 3MT preliminary rounds, which were prematurely cut short due to the pandemic. She did not win her preliminary round that year and in the two years since, she continued to refine her presentation and sought help from the Student Academic Success Center.
In the end, it’s all worth it if she’s able to get her message out to a broader audience.
“Urban surfaces – roofs, streets and parking lots – are so common, they are everywhere,” Li said. “This topic is relevant because we are now facing urban heat and flooding problems everyday. I hope the data points I shared in the presentation catch people’s attention and make them realize that what a big problem we’re facing. It will be good if my presentation makes people start to think about this topic.”
Watch the 2022 Three Minute Thesis Championship on YouTube.
2022 Finalists
The 2021 3MT competition was canceled due to COVID-19.
The 2020 3MT competition was canceled due to COVID-19.
The 2019 Three Minute Thesis Championship was held at Kresge Theatre on Tuesday, March 26.
2019 Winners
2019 Finalists
Watch the 2019 finalists' presentations on YouTube
April 11, 2018
Practice Makes Perfect for Three Minute Thesis Winners
Penman takes first place and People's Choice Award
By Shannon Riffe
Doctoral students took the stage at Kresge Auditorium to describe their research and its significance in three minutes or less during the finals of Carnegie Mellon University's Three Minute Thesis competition.
First place and the People's Choice Award — selected by the live audience — went to Will Penman from the Department of English. Second place went to Navid Kazem, who is studying civil and environmental engineering, and third place went to Ardon Shorr from the Department of Biological Sciences. Biomedical engineering student Sahil Rastogi was selected as the Alumni Choice Award winner by alumni watching the Facebook feed.
The event, in its fifth year at Carnegie Mellon, started at the University of Queensland in 2008 and has been adopted by hundreds of institutions in more than 57 countries. University Libraries Dean Keith Webster, who brought the competition to CMU, served as host of Tuesday's finals.
The first-, second-, and third-place winners were all repeat participants, who had competed in at least one other Three Minute Thesis competition.
For first-place winner Penman, whose presentation invited the audience to participate in a call and response exercise, this was his second attempt.
"For me, this year it was about having a sense of fun attached," Penman said. "A lot of times, academic research can be kind of dry, so I really wanted to have this sense of being called into something. I'm calling the audience into a call-and-response and that mirrors what I'm doing in my dissertation to think about race and being called into a deeper interaction."
Shorr, a doctoral student in the Mellon College of Science who was a finalist in CMU's first Three Minute Thesis competition, also was participating in his second championship.
"My first Three Minute Thesis talk was about why so many astronauts return from space with health problems," Shorr said. "This time, as my work has evolved, I'm talking about how we can learn about proteins in the body using astronomy software. It's a story of building tools by learning from other fields."
As a co-founder of the student group Public Communication for Researchers, which helps graduate students explain their work and why it matters, and a former presenter at TEDxCMU, Shorr approached the finals with experience in public speaking.
First-time Three Minute competitor Carla Viegas, a student in the School of Computer Science's Language Technologies Institute, recognizes the value of presentation skills.
"The reason I wanted to compete was to step outside of my comfort zone," said Viegas, who presented her research on stuttering. "Even if you have great research, but don't communicate it properly, not even peers will be able to build upon your work. So I wanted to challenge myself and make my research topic understandable for everyone. Preparing for the preliminary round made me feel uncomfortable, but participating showed me what can be achieved."
Kazem said he wanted the audience to understand the interdisciplinary nature of his work, which features elements of mechanical engineering and physics. His experience in the Three Minute Thesis preliminary rounds in 2016 and 2017 prepared him to take home a prize this year.
"I made it so much simpler," Kazem said. "If you look at my presentation last year, it was too complicated. I learned that there is not enough time to go in depth on your topic. Keep it as simple as possible."
2018 Finalists
Lola Ben-Alon, School of Architecture
Mats Forssell, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Navid Kazem, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Will Penman, Department of English
Sahil Rastogi, Biomedical Engineering
Brian Sergi, Engineering and Public Policy
Ardon Shorr, Department of Biological Sciences
Carla Viegas, Language Technologies Institute
Watch the Three Minute Thesis finalists presentations on YouTube.
First Place Winner, Diane Nelson 2017 Three Minute Thesis Championship competitors and judges
Ten Ph.D. students representing four CMU schools and colleges competed in McConomy Auditorium for the 2017 Three Minute Thesis Championship. For the first time, the competition was streamed live online, where alumni viewers had the chance to vote for the new Alumni Award. Thanks to all of the competitors and judges and congratulations to the winners!
3MT 2017 Finalists:
Michael Craig, Engineering and Public Policy, College of Engineering
Pallavi Baljekar, Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science
Jesse Thornburg, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Ania Jaroszewicz, Social and Design Sciences, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Will Penman, English, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences
Jooli Han, Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
Sudipto Mandal, Materials Science and Engineering
Diane Nelson, Biomedical Engineering
Emily Simon, Biological Sciences
Surya Aggarwal, Biological Sciences
Read the CMU home page story about the 2017 Three Minute Thesis competition.
(Left) President Subra Suresh with 1st Place and People's Choice Award Winner Pratiti Mandal. (Right) President Suresh and University Libraries Dean Keith Webster with all 2016 3MT @ CMU Finalists.
Congratulations to Pratiti Mandal (1st place and People's Choice), Juliann Reineke and Shinjini Kundu (2nd place tie), and Amit Datta (3rd place), as well as the rest of our 2016 3MT Championship students. Ten students competed in this year's Finals. Who would have gotten your vote?
Finalists who participated in the 2016 Championship:
Shinjini Kundu, Biomedical Engineering: Predicting future osteoarthritis using MRI: the untold story of cartilage
Vinitha Ganesan, Biological Sciences: A New method to help the discovery of diagnostic biomarkers for autoimmune diseases
Juliann Reineke, English: Three sheets to the wind: the Jolly Jack Tar and British Masculinity in the 18th Century
Blue Martin, Biomedical Engineering: Development and modeling of multi-scale continuous high gradient magnetophoretic separator for malaria-infected red blood cells
Jonathan Kush, Tepper School of Business: Ties than bind and ties that tear: the influence of network centralization and density on shared social identity and performance
Giuseppe Vinci, Statistics: High dimensional graphical models for neural connectivities
Daniel Shiwarski, Biological Sciences: Unlocking the DOR to the surface: Regulated surface delivery of the delta-Opioid receptor
Amy Stetten, Physics: Inducing surface flows at fluid interfaces through aerosolization of lipid dispersions
Pratiti Mandal, Mechanical Engineering: Investigation and mitigation of degradation of fuel cells
Amit Datta, Electrical and Computer Engineering: Discovering personal data use on the web
Watch all of our 2016 Finalists
Check out the CMU home page story on the 2016 Three Minute Thesis Competition.
Congratulations! Annie Arnold, Michael Craig, Sam Ventura & Vincent DeGeorge came out on top (1st, 2nd, 3rd & People's Choice) at CMU's 2015 3MT Championship. Eleven finalists participated. Who would get your vote?
Finalists who participated in the 2015 Championship:
Milad Memarzadeh, Civil & Environmental Engineering: Probabilistic learning and planning framework for optimal management of systems under uncertain environments
Michael Craig, Engineering & Public Policy: Keeping the lights on: Power systems, water and climate change
Vincent DeGeorge, Materials Science & Engineering: Tomorrow's electricity: Stadium or lawn seating?
Sam Ventura, Statistics: Solving the identity crisis
George Lederman, Civil & Environmental Engineering: Good vibrations: How to protect our infrastructure
Madhumitha Ramesh, Biological Sciences: How do cells assemble the ribosome nanomachines?
Amit Datta, Electrical & Computer Engineering: Transparency in online targeting
Annie Arnold, Chemistry: Modified graphene: Biodegradable bone implants
Gus Xia, Machine Learning: Music, mind and machine: Expressive collaborative music performance via machine learning
Lily Morse, Organizational Behavior & Theory: Exposing fraud vulnerabilities in client-auditor relationships
Garrett Stack, English: Damming the Romantics
Check out the CMU home page story: Three Minute Thesis.
Four Ph.D. candidates were crowned “Academic Idols” at Carnegie Mellon’s 2014 Three Minute Thesis Championship round on Feb. 18., 2014.
The first-place winner was David Rollinson (Robotics Institute, SCS), who presented his thesis Snake Robots in the Wild!
Second place went to Suchitra Ramachandran (Biological Sciences, MCS), who presented The Brain as a Statistician.
Third place went to Patrick Foley (Statistics, DC) and his thesis Statistics and the Human Connectome.
In an audience vote, Ramachandran and Arun Shrivats (Biomedical Engineering, CIT) with the thesis siRNA Therapeutics for Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva tied for the People’s Choice Award.
Eleven Ph.D. candidates made it to the final round out of 140 initial registrants. The competition, brought to CMU by Dean of Libraries Keith Webster, challenged the doctoral students to present their thesis in three minutes or less in language understandable to a general audience.
Check out the CMU home page story: Academic Idol.
