Michelle Reid crowned McMaster 3MT champion

3MT Winners

Stick to the facts. McMaster 3MT winners Ben Hamby (left), Michelle Reid (centre) and Anthony Gatti. Reid was voted this year's champion by a panel of judges from the broader Hamilton community.


Graduate student Michelle Reid will be representing McMaster at the upcoming Ontario Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in April.

Reid, an Environmental & Earth Science student, took the top prize for her presentation on wetlands reclamation in the Alberta oil sands, besting a diverse field of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from all faculties.

Second place went to Philosophy PhD Ben Hamby, while Anthony Gatti, a graduate student in the School of Rehabilitation Science, placed third in the competition.

A total of 47 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows competed in four preliminary heats leading up to the final. The top three from each heat went head-to-head, giving the judges a tough job to determine the finalists. View the complete list of finalists.

The 3MT challenge allows participants to share their research with a broad audience, sharpen valuable communication skills and prepare for a successful career in academia, industry, government or as an entrepreneur. Competitors had just 180 seconds to explain their research (and its wider impact) to a panel of judges, and could only use one static slide during their oral presentation.

Judges for the final were members of the broader community:

Rebecca Bourque, director of strategic accounts and business development at Mitacs; Grace Diffey, the Vice-President of Community Relations at the Hamilton Community Foundation; Jeff Mahoney, columnist at The Hamilton Spectator; Duncan Martin, McMaster Alumnus and formerly with the Ministry of Labour; Anne Tennier, the vice-president of environmental affairs at Maple Leaf Foods.

AM900 CHML’s Scott Thompson served as emcee for the afternoon, and helped break the tension by chatting with competitors during impromptu “interviews” between presentations.

The Ontario 3MT competition will take place April 24 at McMaster. Students from 19 universities will compete for the provincial title.

For more pictures from the 3MT finals and preliminary heats, visit the School of Graduate Studies on Facebook.