Ten Stanford PhD students took the stage at Hauck Auditorium last Thursday with a daunting task: Distill years of complex scholarship into a compelling, jargon-free, 3-minute talk for a general audience.

The event marked Stanford’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, hosted by the Office of the Vice Provost for Graduate Education. Adapted from a format that began at the University of Queensland, the 3MT challenges students to present their dissertation research clearly, concisely, and engagingly – with no props and only one slide.

The audience consisted of a packed crowd and a panel of distinguished judges, who evaluated each talk based on clarity, accessibility, and delivery. Supporters excitedly clutched signs of support and erupted in applause between each presentation, cheering each competitor and giving them high-fives as they walked toward the stage. In the end, three students took home top honors.

“The 3MT Competition showcases the strengths of our incredible doctoral students,” said Vice Provost for Graduate Education Ken Goodson. “Stanford PhD students are known for their exceptional thesis work and pursuit of impactful topics. The university affords them a high degree of freedom through its traditions and interdisciplinary culture, fostering passion and the ability to communicate about their work, as demonstrated by the finalists.”

President Jonathan Levin emceed the competition and praised the event for highlighting an “incredible span of research – from essentially pure curiosity-driven additions to knowledge all the way up to patient care. That is really a hallmark of the university, that research is both broad and spans so much of the pathway from just advancing knowledge all the way out to changing people’s lives.”

+5

Images by Andrew Brodhead

The finalists represented four of Stanford’s seven schools and were selected from a pool of university-wide applicants earlier this year.

Judges included W.E. Moerner, the Harry S. Mosher Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences and 2014 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry; Michele Rasmussen, vice provost for student affairs; Condoleezza Rice, the Tad and Dianne Taube Director of the Hoover Institution; Martin Shell, vice president and chief external relations officer; and David Studdert, vice provost and dean of research.

Each finalist chose a song to play as they walked onto the stage, and some contestants wove in personal connections to their research, such as having a loved one with cancer. Audience members cheered each competitor, and one set of grandparents traveled from out of state and arrived an hour early to support a finalist.

Top honors

Favour Nerrise, a PhD student in electrical engineering, won both the first place $5,000 prize and the $500 people’s choice award with her engaging presentation, “Quick Reflexes & Lost Memories: Teaching AI to Spot Brain Disease.” One of her many supporters in the audience excitedly held up a large photo of Nerrise and cheered as she walked to the stage to present her work.

Nerrise was quickly swept up in hugs and accolades after Levin announced her as the winner and presented her with a giant check.

“It feels amazing. I’m so honored to have been selected by both the audience and the judges,” Nerrise said. “Coming from an engineering background, where things tend to be so technical when you communicate, switching back to layperson communication was probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. But it’s the most important, because it really challenges researchers and scientists to fundamentally think about what brought them to this work.”

During the competition, Levin also applauded a dozen students selected for honorable mention, as well as the coaches who worked with the finalists.

Tamri Matiashvili, a PhD student in economics, took home second place and a $3,000 prize with her presentation, “Talent, Trust, and Health: How Women Changed Medicine.”

She said she tried not to think about the experience as a competition. “That would have made it very stressful,” she said. “I was just thinking, ‘I get to present about these women that I’ve been studying for some years and that history has forgotten for centuries,’ and it was my opportunity to really tell their story. The preparation was amazing.”

Coaches helped competitors sharpen their speech, movement, and delivery, she said. “These are lessons I will have forever,” Matiashvili said. “It’s very important for us to be able to communicate our findings and our research to lay audiences so they understand that supporting research is so important, and why we care.”

Kristen Abels, a PhD student in chemical engineering, took third place and $1,000 prize for her presentation, “From Brines to Batteries: Membranes for Critical Mineral Recovery.”

Abels said finding ways to explain her research to those outside of her field in a competition environment was both exciting and challenging. “It’s a way to encourage graduate students to work on sharing their research with the general public,” Abels said. “We’re all doing research to make some impact in the world, and being able to communicate that impact is an important part of the research that we’re doing.”