FPSE Storm Three Minute Thesis Final

Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering student Paul Gow scored a double victory in Wednesday’s final for the Three Minute Thesis competition.

The event sees PhD students pitting their presentation skills against each other and attempting to explain their (often very complicated) thesis topics in three minutes or less. Not only is the time limit strictly enforced, they’re allowed no props, and only a single static slide to act as a backdrop to their talk.

Standards were very high, with some very engaging talks from the other faculties (including a noteworthy and scarily dramatic offering from English student Sumei Karen Anne Tan) but Paul Gow’s talk on Terahertz Emitters scored an early victory by winning over the audience vote and scoring him £500 towards his research fund. In further testament to how Paul managed to take this seemingly complex subject and make it not only very interesting, but also very easy to understand to the non-expert judges and audience, he then took the top prize from the judge vote and netted a further £1000 towards his research. His talk outlined how Terahertz light (lying between micro waves and infrared) has a host of uses from security to medicine, and how his research is helping develop new emitters.

Paul Gow- Three Minute Thesis winner

Congratulations are also in order for the runner up Hannah Shutt who presented an interesting lecture on her research in testing auditory response in armed-forces personnel as part of her PhD in the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, and won a £500 contribution to her research.

Well done to everyone involved in the competition, and if you keep an eye on the University website there should be videos of the talks (heats and finals) appearing soon.