Written by: Tiffany Westry
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From left: Karim Budhwani, Kathryn Henley and Clarissa WeaverThe University of Alabama at Birmingham Graduate School hosted its first Three Minute Thesis competition in October.
Created at the University of Queensland in 2008, 3MT is a competition that challenges Ph.D. and professional doctoral students to communicate the significance of their projects to a general audience in just three minutes. The competition is now held in at least 200 universities across more than 18 countries worldwide.
“This exercise cultivates students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills,” said Lori McMahon, dean of the Graduate School. “This is an important skill for graduate students to develop so that they can communicate their research to policymakers who will make decisions regarding new laws and funding, journalists who will write about the implications of their research for the general public, and even friends and family.”
More than 80 doctoral students and 10 master’s students registered for the UAB competition. Doctoral students presented at preliminary rounds, with 27 students advancing to the semifinals. Nine finalists were selected to present their three-minute thesis in front of an audience and a panel of eight judges that included WBHM education reporter Dan Carsen; Matthew Hamilton, Regions Bank vice president of Human Resources and co-organizer of TEDx Birmingham; ABC 33/40 news anchor Pam Huff; CBS42 news anchor Sherri Jackson; Dynamic Civil Solutions President Bolaji Kukoyi; AT&T Alabama President Fred McCallum Jr.; UAB Associate Professor of Anthropology Sarah Parcak, Ph.D.; and BBVA Compass Vice President Steve Wideman. Judges selected first- and second-place winners, while audience member votes determined the People’s Choice Award winner.
This year’s winners of the UAB 3MT are:
First place, Kathryn Henley, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in the UAB School of Medicine. Henley’s research focuses on developing two methods to assess pain in pigs, using the science of animal communication.
Her interest in relieving chronic pain began nine years ago, after her father fell from a ladder and sustained a spinal cord injury that paralyzed him from the shoulders down. She hopes to develop better pain medications for people living with chronic pain. Pain medications are typically developed in rodents. Unlike these smaller animals, pigs have nervous systems that are much more similar to those of humans. Pigs also process pain in similar ways. By observing facial expressions and sounds of the animals when they are in pain, Henley is developing a scale to measure changes in the animal’s demeanor to determine whether newly developed pain medications are working.
| “This is an important skill for graduate students to develop so that they can communicate their research to policymakers who will make decisions regarding new laws and funding, journalists who will write about the implications of their research for the general public, and even friends and family.” |
Henley received a $1,000 prize and will go on to represent UAB at the 3MT Regional Competition at the Conference for Southern Graduate Schools in Annapolis, Maryland, in March 2017.
Second place, Karim Budhwani, Ph.D. candidate in Material Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering.
Budhwani’s research examines the use of nondestructive testing and vibration to make chemotherapy safer, by using fabricated microbubbles filled with chemotherapy drugs to target tumors directly. Once the bubbles reach the tumor, soundwaves from ultrasound machines are used to pop the bubbles, delivering a more targeted dose of chemotherapy to patients.
People’s Choice Award, Clarissa Weaver, a Ph.D. candidate in the UAB College of Arts and Sciences Department of Chemistry.
Weaver’s research focuses on neurodegenerative disease and protein aggregates, or tangles.
Inside every cell there are proteins, and the proteins must have a certain shape or structure to perform their necessary function. If the cells are damaged or stressed, the proteins can become misshaped and tangled together, which can be deadly to the cells. These protein tangles are implicated in a number of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. Treatments available mostly address symptoms.
Weaver’s research examines the use of a molecular motor, a protein called HSP104 that comes from yeast, to reactivate and clear out proteins trapped in these toxic tangles. Specifically, Weaver is working to understand how, at the molecular level, this motor is able to break up protein tangles in order to tune it for therapeutic application to treat the root cause of neurodegenerative diseases.
While not eligible to compete at the regional level, due to 3MT’s contest rules, three students advanced to the finals in the UAB 3MT competition. The master’s competition winners are: first place, Tyler Reed Bell; second place, Rebecca Shapiro; and third place, Andrea Stacy.