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By Guest Blogger: Laura Hache, Gradroom Assistant

Have you ever tried explaining your research to those outside your field, to your grandparents, or to your friends at a party and see their eyes gloss over?  It’s a tough endeavour communicating your intricate research in plain language, to make it both accessible and interesting to the “lay audience”. As graduate and PhD students, this important communication skill is not typically taught in class but it is critical in order to get yourself and your research noticed. You may wish to convey your research to funding agencies, the media, industry, or the general public but you risk losing your audience if you use complex language or forget to really focus on your key messaging.

This is the challenge at the heart of the University-Wide Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition.  Doctoral students will present their research in three minutes or less to a panel of non-specialist judges. This competition allows doctoral students to share their work with a wider audience such as graduate students from other disciplines and the general public.  This competition will be a great opportunity to hear about a wide variety of ground-breaking, innovative research coming from U of T doctoral students.  This event will also allow you as grad students to see this style of “elevator pitch” communication in action.   The competition is sure to be high-energy, intriguing, and a really exciting way to engage with the significant doctoral research happening right now at U of T.

The competition will consist of two events: the preliminary heats and the U of T Final.

The preliminary heats are divided into: Division I (Humanities) & Division II (Social Sciences), Division III (Physical Sciences,) and Division IV (Life Sciences) and will be held during the week of March 23. Winners from each division will go on to compete in the final round on April 8^th.

More details about the event can be found on the School of Graduate Studies website.

If you’re intrigued to find out more about the competition, check out the 3MT Ontario Competition website to check out some past finalists.

If you’re interested to learn more about communicating your research in lay language, take a look at this brief article to find out more.