On February 25, 2021, UBC’s School of Biomedical Engineering held its first Three Minute Thesis Heat. To a virtual audience of over 90 people, each of our 10 contestants presented their thesis in pre-recorded, three minute videos embedded in a single powerpoint slide.
That’s right; all they had was three minutes and a slide to speak to the breadth and depth of their graduate thesis.
SBME’s judges for the event were Dr. Nika Shakiba, Assistant Professor at the SBME; Dr Nozomu Yachie, Associate Professor at the SBME and CRC in Synthetic Biology; and Dr. Payam Zahedi, Strategic Planning & Operations Director for SBME.
Presentations were scored in two categories—Comprehension & Content, and Engagement & Communication—covering everything from subject knowledge and passion, to language and attention to audience. To avoid conflicts of interest, judges did not review presentations from students under their supervision, and any presentation that broke the three-minute ceiling lost marks before scores were averaged and each contestant ranked.
