Vitae Three Minute Thesis (3MT ®) Competition 2024 sponsored by Universal Impact – and the winners are…
On Wednesday 2 October the broadcast of the Vitae 3MT® Competition hosted by Jon Chase went live on the Vitae YouTube Channel, hundreds of viewers joined to watch the six finalists present their thesis topic. Then on Friday 4 October 2024, the three winners of the Vitae Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition were announced!
Sponsored by The Conversation UK through its training and mentoring subsidiary, Universal Impact, the Vitae Three Minute Thesis (originally founded by the University of Queensland), is this year celebrating its tenth year running as the standout competition for doctoral researchers to condense and communicate their thesis topics into presentations of only three minutes.
850 researchers took part in 3MT® competitions across the UK, 64 of them won their institutional competition and were entered into the Vitae 3MT® Competition. From this, six finalists made it through to the final:
- Charlie Gerlis from the University of the West of England
- Ferdinando Sereno from University College London
- James McMullan from Ulster University
- Jo Baker from Newcastle University
- Muhammad Muddasar from the University of Limerick,
- Natalie Weir from the University of Derby.
Three winners were chosen from the six:
The Judges’ Choice Award went to Jo Baker, for her thesis ‘Elsa, the tiger and the Speech Sound Disorder’, which highlighted the issue of children’s speech impediments.
The People’s Choice Award was voted for by the public and this year we received a record high of over 2000 public votes, the winner was James McMullan for his thesis, ‘Start young, live long: is reeling in a tasty catch the secret to longevity?’
A new category for this year, the Editor’s Choice Award sponsored by Universal Impact was chosen by the Conversation UK, and was awarded to Muhammad Muddasar for his thesis presentation, ‘Harnessing the Power of Leftover Lignin for Waste Heat Harvesting’.
Prizes are awarded to the winners, as well as to the six finalists and 12 semi-finalists; we look forward to hearing about the impact of the prizes.
Vitae are thrilled with the range and quality of the finalists’ presentations, and we look forward to the 2025 Vitae 3MT ® Competition, where more researchers will be challenged to communicate their research in a compelling and concise three minutes.
If you are a doctoral candidate from a Vitae member institution considering the 3MT® journey, make sure you take a look at this year’s final for inspiration.
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Contact for more information:
Louise Wheeler, Digital marketing and communications coordinator
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Vitae is a non-profit programme run by the Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC), which promotes the work of researchers and researcher developers, and seeks to enhance academic environments through its advocacy for the professional development of researchers, its focus on policy affecting research culture, and research and evaluation work.