2026 Three Minute Thesis Finalists
Ben Hammel, a graduate student in the Dukovic Group, was a finalist in the 2026 麻豆免费版下载Boulder Three Minute Thesis Competition. We caught up with Ben to find out more about the whole 3MT process.听
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What is 3MT?
3MT stands for Three-Minute Thesis, which was a competition started at the University of Queensland. I think the history behind it is that they were going through droughts in Australia and everyone had these three-minute egg timers in their showers to limit water usage. Someone had this idea of maybe this was a good challenge for condensing/communicating your research: how well can you present your thesis in three minutes?
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What did you have to do?
I came into this wanting to learn how to clearly describe my research. The rubric is really about explaining your science. They look at clarity, your enthusiasm, and about the slide and presentation. But they also look at can you describe the motivation of your research? Can you describe the design of your research? Can you describe the conclusions and societal impact of your work? So it is about science communication, with a strong grounding in the scientific aspects. Going through this process and thinking through these things has given me a better understanding of my own science.
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Can you describe your research in five words?
Using microscope to look at nanocrystals. Six, that is ok, right?
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What drew you to do the 3MT?
I wanted to improve my scientific communication skills, and I felt like there was something really cool about my research that I wanted to share. It is this simple idea that we need to look at nanocrystals to understand how they work. I get to use this amazing microscope to do just that!
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What was the best part of the 3MT program?
The best part was definitely the cohort of talks. In the final competition folks got to see eleven presentations from across the graduate school, and that was awesome, but in the preliminary round there were more than 25. There were so many great talks from so many parts of the school that I got to see. It was really fun. You get to see in an hour so much condensed scientific knowledge. That was definitely the best part.
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What was the worst/hardest part of the 3MT program?
The hardest part was talking about the science. It is so easy for me to say 鈥渨e study these nanocrystals, and they鈥檙e cool, and I use this microscope鈥, but when people really ask me about what are the scientific questions you have and what are the experiments you run to answer them? And how are you going to engineer nanocrystals? It鈥檚 difficult to answer these kinds of technical questions in an accessible way.
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How do you think your experience in 3MT will help you in the future?
Oh, it鈥檚 already helping me! Just in the way I talk to people and explain things. I feel like it has made me intellectually stronger and I am already noticing that it helps me communicate more clearly and think about my research in different ways.
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What would you say to a grad student considering doing 3MT in the future?
Strongly recommend. It will take up a decent amount of your time, but it is definitely worth it. Don鈥檛 be afraid to tackle hard scientific concepts! One thing I regret not doing more of is really trying hard to tackle quantum mechanics in my talk. The properties of quantum dots are derived from quantum mechanics and I was scared to try to explain that, and I made my explanation totally classical. I was describing electricity flowing through crystals, but I think that people were hungry to learn more about the deeper science, and I should have given it a shot, at least to practice it and see if I could do it.听