Harish Achar Vasant wins the FPSE 3MT faculty final
A group of students from Physical Sciences and Engineering (FPSE) went head-to-head last Wednesday afternoon in their Three Minute Thesis faculty final.
Competing for a chance to represent the faculty at the University’s Grand Final in May, each doctoral researcher delivered a bite-sized presentation on their thesis, attempting to condense thousands of hours’ work into their allocated three minutes.
Voted for by the Judging Panel, first prize went to Harish Achar Vasant, a PhD student from the Optoelectronics Research Centre. Harish spoke confidently throughout his presentation on building high-powered single-frequency lasers.
Second prize, and also the People’s Choice award, was awarded to Xiaoqing (Sally) Shi, a PhD student from Electronics and Computer Science.
Xiaoqing easily translated her complex research for a non-specialist audience, in her presentation titled ‘Fabrication at the nanoscale: using a focussed helium ion beam to make the devices of the future.'
After receiving his winner’s certificate, Harish said: "I thought it was going to be tough as it was going up against PhD students from the whole faculty, and it was! But I practiced a lot to get the timing right for my presentation."
Harish also said: “When you do research, you are just dealing with a small number of people but I think it is important to tell others, the public, about the research we are doing.
“Three Minute Thesis is a good way of practicing that. Normally it can take around seven hours to present a thesis and you would lose the public’s attention, but this [3MT] makes it easy to grasp research and for the public to really understand.”
The competitors to take part in the FPSE Three Minute Thesis faculty final were:
- Xiaoqing (Sally) Shi
- Joao Valente
- Miranda Turvey
- Harish Achar Vasant
The next, and last, of the 3MT faculty finals to take place is:
Faculty of Natural and Environmental Sciences Final - Thursday 31 March 2016 at 2.30pm, 54/4011 L/T 4A
The 3MT Grand Final takes place on 12 May and makes up part of the Festival of Doctoral Research.
Follow the Doctoral College on Twitter, @UoSDocCollege, for live tweets during the faculty finals and all the latest Doctoral College updates.