UIC Graduate College students participate in 3-minute thesis competition

How do you condense months’ worth of research into three minutes? UIC graduate students showed how, by participating in the UIC Graduate College’s 2025 Three Minute Thesis competition in February and March. The Three Minute Thesis is an academic research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland, Australia. UIC graduate students have participated in the competition since 2017.

The competition supports students’ capacity to explain their research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. They must condense their research into a brief, engaging presentation, using a single presentation slide. Students enrolled in either a master’s or PhD program with an original research project are eligible to compete.

This year, UIC received the most submissions in the competition’s history at the university. Thirty-three individual contestants presented their research in person during the final two days of February. A panel of graduate college faculty and staff judges selected 10 students to compete in the finals. The final live competition took place on March 6 at the UIC Writing Center. The first-place winner, Angela Nguyen, a doctoral student in pharmaceutical sciences, will represent UIC at the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 2-4, 2025.

2025 winners:

First-place winner: Angela Nguyen, pharmaceutical sciences, “Stopping TMEM97’s Criminal Actions in Alzheimer’s Disease”

First runner-up: Clare Wongwai, psychology, “The Association of Age at Immigration on Depression Misperception Among Immigrant Adults in the U.S.”

Second runner-up: Raguez Taha; civil, materials and environmental engineering; “Finding the Missing Piece”

People’s Choice award: Vitor Lourenzon, pharmaceutical sciences, “Antidote compounds produced by Pseudovibrio bacteria can protect Marine Sponges”