By Vinoothene Chandrasseakaran
Pix Ikhwan Hashim

BANGI, 10 May 2016 – A competition to determine the most convincing explanations of doctoratal thesis in three minutes by students of The National University of Malaysia (UKM) has received encouraging response.

However, the field of contestants at the 2016 Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) challenge recently was whittled down to ten very keen PhD students representing the three main clusters, namely the social sciences, engineering and  science and technology.

Nurul Ajleaa Abdul Rahman was the winner for the science social cluster while Wan Farisan Wan Sulaiman came out tops for the engineering cluster.

For the science and technology category, Nurul Huda Hashim took first place.

They represented UKM at the national-level finals at Universiti Utara Malaysia.

Prof Dato’ Dr. Mazlin Mokhtar, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation), who officiated the final,  described  The Three-Minute Thesis Challenge as a huge success.

“They have to make the most of  pitching their ideas for 3 minutes, so time cannot be wasted”, he said before the names of the winners were announced.

The 3MT is a research competition developed  to provide students with an opportunity to cultivate  academic, research, communication and presentation skills.

The competition tests students’ ability to effectively explain their research and its significance in just three minutes in simple, every-day  language understood by most lay-persons.

Contestants were judged based on appropriateness of content, ease of understanding, effective delivery, and ability to engage the audience, among others.

Normally, an 80,000 word thesis would take nine hours to present.