On October 13, 14 graduate students from four graduate programs participated in the CBS 3-Minute Thesis competition. The goal: to present their research in 180 seconds or less. Participants rose to the challenge, condensing topics from slowing the effects of aging to understanding the impacts of cavefish sleep into just a few minutes using a single slide.
“Providing opportunities for science students to learn to communicate with broad audiences is more important than ever,” says Alex Eilts, who served as a judge along with Zana Sims, a postdoc in Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (EEB) and Katherine Walstrom, a CBS alum and visiting professor with the Molecular, Cellular, Developmental Biology, and Genetics (MCDB&G) graduate program. “This competition is a great opportunity to practice distilling complex research and presenting it in a way that is accessible. It was great to be part of that.” Eilts is director of the CBS Conservatory & Botanical Collection with an extensive background in science communication that includes organizing a science film festival and hosting the College’s Petri Dish panel discussion series.
“The biggest lesson I learned is that communicating science isn’t just about accuracy, it’s about making people feel the curiosity that drives the work, that 'wait, how does that even work?' moment that pulled me into science in the first place.”- Nisha Vishwanathan
Nisha Vishwanathan, a Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Biophysics (BMBB) graduate student in Michael Freeman’s lab, was awarded the top spot for her talk on antibiotic resistance. Her research focuses on peptides and leveraging nature’s designs to create stronger medicines and antibiotics. Mari Reid, a BMBB graduate student in the Mashek lab, came in second for her talk about research focused on fatty liver disease.
“The competition forced me to stop thinking like a textbook and start thinking like a storyteller,” Vishwanathan says. “The biggest lesson I learned is that communicating science isn’t just about accuracy, it’s about making people feel the curiosity that drives the work, that 'wait, how does that even work?' moment that pulled me into science in the first place. My mom and grandpa have been asking me for years what I actually do in the lab, and I’ve tried explaining it so many times. But whenever someone asked them, they’d just say, 'She grows bacteria in her lab,' which isn’t wrong. But now, after hearing my 3-Minute Thesis version, they can actually explain it too, and I found that very endearing.”
Participants included:
- Elena Ayala (Plant and Microbial Biology/PMB): Rocking the art of respiration: Identification and characterization of a flavin-based extracellular electron transfer pathway in Thermoanaerobacter pseudethanolicus
- Advisor: Jeff Gralnick
- Jacob Bridge (MCDB&G): Can somatic mutation accumulation explain diverging health outcomes in aged twins?
- Advisor: Xiao Dong
- Maya Enriquez (EEB): What a pink, blind fish can tell us about sleep
- Advisor: Suzanne McGaugh
- Sam Erickson (BMBB): Intrinsic structural disordered in de novo lab-evolved proteins
- Advisor: Burckhard Seelig
- Christopher Hansen (PMB): A microbial record in naled ice: from the Greenland Ice Sheet to Mars
- Advisor: Trinity Hamilton
- Aspen Hughes (BMBB): Intrinsically Disordered Regions: The Structure in Spaghetti
- Advisor: Lexy von Diezmann
- Tra Kieu (BMBB): Targeting the Troublemakers: Senescent Cells as New Therapeutic Targets in Liver Cancer?
- Advisor: Laura Niedernhofer
- Mari Reid (BMBB): Tackling fatty liver disease from the Inside Out
- Advisor: Doug Mashek
- Alana Rodney (MCDB&G): Evaluation of TMEM106B and its Role in Dementia
- Advisor: Michael Koob
- Rahagir Salekeen (BMBB): How communities help shape identities, lessons from stem cells in the aging liver.
- Advisor: Laura Niedernhofer
- Amanda Scharenbrock (MCDB&G): Acidifying the Stomach of the Cell: Investigating mechanisms of acidification during autophagy
- Advisor: Thomas Neufeld
- Basak Velioglu Ulubas (BMBB): Recreating Life from Synthetic Soup
- Advisor: Kate Adamala
- Nisha Vishwanathan (BMBB): Leveraging Nature's design for stronger medicines
- Advisor: Michael Freeman
- Qiuming Wu (BMBB): Can we press a "reset button" inside our cell?
- Advisor: Paul Robbins
Vishwanathan will now move on to the University-level 3-Minute Thesis Competition. That event, hosted by the University’s Graduate School, will take place at the Coffman Memorial Union Theater from 10-11:30 a.m. on November 14. — Lance Janssen