Vancouver, Tri-Cities 3MT competitors

3MT - Three Minute Thesis, Founded by the University of Queensland.

Several CAS graduate students from WSU Vancouver and WSU Tri-Cities vied for the honor of representing their campus in the 2021 WSU Three Minute Thesis competition.

Shawnee Kasanke, the semi-finalist from the WSU Tri-Cities campus, is a CAS graduate student in biological sciences. In her 3MT presentation, she explains how her research to better understand the mutually beneficial exchanges nutrients between switchgrass and fungi could inform sustainable agricultural practices.

KC Cifizzari, who is also pursing a doctorate in biological sciences at WSU Tri-Cities, participated in the 3MT event and shared his research work on the effect of a mycorrhizal incoulant on young grapevine growth and nutrient uptake.

CAS graduate students who participated in the Vancouver campus qualifying event included:

  • Coty Jasper (neuroscience): Hearing, Hormones, and… Toadfish?
  • Fabiana Ferracina (mathematics and statistics): Finding the Latent Needle in the Observed Haystack
  • Nathan May (mathematics and statistics): Discovering Structure in Data: Taming High Dimensions
  • Taylor Rezvani (IIDD with psychology, zoology): Social puppies: How veterinarians support lifelong dog-human relationships
  • Richard Snyder (English): As with Painting, So with Poetry: Reading a Visual Culture

The college hosted a Pullman campus qualifying event featuring five additional CAS graduate students.

WSU competition

The WSU final competition will be broadcast and streamed online by Northwest Public Broadcasting on Wednesday, March 24.

The international 3MT research communication competition challenges PhD students to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance in just three minutes and using just one visual slide. Participants hone their academic, presentation and research communication skills by effectively explaining their research in language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.