Years of research. One slide. Three minutes.
That was the challenge on April 10 as doctoral student finalists took the stage at Michigan State University’s College of Engineering Three Minute Thesis competition, transforming complex engineering research into clear, compelling presentations for a broad audience.
Held in Room 115 of the International Center, the college’s third annual 3MT® competition highlighted not only the depth of graduate research across the college, but also the importance of communicating that work with clarity, confidence and impact.
Developed by The University of Queensland, the Three Minute Thesis competition asks Ph.D. students to explain their research in just three minutes using a single static slide. Each student competing at the college level had already earned top honors in a department-level competition before advancing to the final round.
Top honors went to:
- First place: Autumn McLane-Svoboda, doctoral student in biomedical engineering, “Sniffing out lung cancer: What honeybees can teach us about early detection.”
- Second place: Faizan Ahmad Lali, doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering, “Improving Pavement Models for Better Road Performance.”
- Third place: Priyangika Pitawala, doctoral student in chemical engineering and materials science, “Engineering Semi Crystallinity for Tunable Properties in 3D Printed Photopolymers.”
- People’s Choice Award: Tsz Hung Wong, doctoral student in mechanical engineering, “Selective-Permeable Hydrogel (SPH) for In-situ Biosensing.”
Other finalists included:
- Vicente Amado, doctoral student in computational mathematics, science and engineering
- Boyang Deng, doctoral student in biosystems and agricultural engineering
- Tzu-Han Hsu, doctoral student in computer science and engineering
- Evan Boxin Sun, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering
New this year, the event also featured faculty presentations in the same three-minute, one-slide format, adding a new dimension to the program and broadening the celebration of research across the college. Faculty presenters included:
- Sudin Bhattacharya, graduate program director and associate professor, biomedical engineering
- Janet Brelin-Fornari, director, technology engineering
- Borzoo Bonakdarpour, associate professor, computer science and engineering
- Betty H.C. Cheng, professor, computer science and engineering
Unlike the student finalists, the faculty presenters did not compete for awards.
Together, the student competition and faculty presentations underscored an important part of engineering education at MSU: meaningful research has even greater impact when it can be shared beyond the lab. By challenging presenters to make sophisticated work accessible in just minutes, the event celebrated both discovery and the communication skills that help move ideas into the world.
Written by Austin Witt.
MSU College of Engineering Media and Public Relations page