PhD 3 Minute Theses

30 third year PhD students from the Civil Engineering department took part in a three minute presentation competition on Wednesday 2 July

Three minute presentations are an up-and-coming event in universities globally for research students to practise their ability of summarising vast amounts of material into a tight time limit.

Students were challenged to describe and explain their thesis titles within a restraint of three minutes. The standard of the presentations was impeccable. All students successfully condensed three years of work, research and experimentation into their micro-theses, and managed to demonstrate quality knowledge and passion.

Topics covered a range of engineering, including transport, environmental, geotechnics, fluid mechanics and structural. Dr Catherine O’Sullivan, Dr Hong Wong and Dr Marios Christou, who were judging the competition, awarded certificates to the winner and two runner-ups.

Reuben Brambleby gave a very clear and sound explanation of his thesis topic on the structural performance of perforated metal to composite joints, and was presented with third prize. In second place was Marianna Micallef’s presentation on crack control in base-restrained reinforced concrete walls. Marianna cracked some jokes about her chosen thesis, at one point claiming “I’m the only person who loves cracks… and my supervisor.” The first prize was awarded to Joseph Haley, who provided the audience with a visually-enhanced presentation on wave crest kinematics and extreme fluid loading.

The Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year award was also presented at the event, this year to Fernando Madrazo-Aguirre. Fernando now goes forward to the Faculty GTA of the Year competition with our best wishes for success.