After hosting the SENG Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition for four years the Center for Engineering Education Innovation (E2I) collaborated with the Office of Postgraduate Studies (PGSO) and hosted the first HKUST 3MT® Competition on March 27, 2018. After two and a half days’ pre-selection interview eight research postgraduate (RPg) students from three schools and seven different countries were shortlisted for the final round. The judging panel of the final round included Professor Charles Ng, Associate Vice-President for Research and Graduate Studies, Professor King Lun Yeung, Associate Dean of Engineering (Research and Graduate Studies), Professor Ting Chuen Pong, Director of E2I, Professor Melody Chao, Associate Professor of Management, Professor Jenny Smith, Associate Professor of Humanities, and Professor Simon Chan, Associate Professor of Chemistry. The finalists gave their 3MT® presentations to the audience including students, faculty members, and staff and exchanged experience and ideas of enhancing research communication skills. The Champion of the 2017 SENG 3MT® Competition, Andrea Feng, also shared her experience of competing in the 2017 Asia-Pacific 3MT® Competition. After an hour and a half’s presentations and discussion, Jin Teng (Melody) Chung, Bioengineering MPhil student under the supervision of Professor Ying Chau, won the championship and People’s Choice Award. The second and the third places went to Akriti Chadda, Bioengineering PhD student supervised by Professor I-ming Hsing, and Billy Lai, Electronic and Computer Engineering MPhil student supervised by Professor Kei May Lau.
Melody and Akriti will also attend the 2018 Asia-Pacific 3MT® Competition to be held in Brisbane, Australia on September 27, 2018.
The 3MT® Competition was developed by the University of Queensland. It cultivates students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills. It increases students’ capacity to effectively explain their research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to non-specialist audience. Today the 3MT® Competition is being held at more than six hundred universities and institutions in more than sixty countries from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Oceania, and South America.
