Figuring out how to heal broken bones is a problem Pranav Kalelkar has spent years researching. But the bigger challenge? Squeezing all of that research into a three-minute presentation for the 2016 Georgia Tech Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition.  

“It was difficult to come up with a speech that would allow me to communicate complex ideas in three minutes,” said Kalelkar, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in chemistry. “I had to create multiple versions out of previous talks to my peers and colleagues to create the speech I used in the preliminaries.”  

Members of the campus community are invited to watch Kalelkar and nine other doctoral students compete in the final round of the competition on Nov. 15 from 5-8 p.m. in the LeCraw Auditorium at Scheller College of Business.  

The 3MT competition, which started at the University of Queensland in Australia and has spread to campuses around the world, is an event that challenges Ph.D. students to explain their research in three minutes in a way that someone with no knowledge of the subject would understand. Last year, Georgia Tech held its first annual 3MT event.

“Presenting in the 3MT competition is a very challenging exercise,” Kalelkar said. “It reinforces the key aspects of your research and how to communicate them to a diverse audience.”

The following students, who were selected during two preliminary rounds held in October, will compete for three research travel grants ranging from $2,000 to $1,000 and a $500 People’s Choice grant:

• Lalit Arun Darunte, Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering
  CO2 Capture from Air
• Diego Dumani Jarquin, Biomedical Engineering
  Photoacoustic Imaging and Therapy Monitoring of Lymph Node Metastasis
• Tesca Fitzgerald, Interactive Computing
  Teaching Robots to Reuse Skills
• Pranav Kalelkar, Chemistry
  Plastic Implants: A Novel Way to Heal Broken Bones
• Chandana Kolluru, Materials Science and Engineering
  Microneedles for Polio Vaccination
• Bharath Hebbe Madhusudhana, Physics
  Reading Out the Geometry from an Atom’s Memory
• Monica McNerney, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  Bacterial biosensors: Low-cost, Field-friendly Nutrition Tests
• Akanksha Krishnakumar Menon, Mechanical Engineering
  Generating Power from Printed Plastics
• Aravind Samba Murthy, Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Recovering Kinetic Energy Using Electric Motors
• Kirsten Parratt, Materials Science and Engineering
  Boosting Statistical Power- Building Better Biomaterials

For more information about the 3MT competition, visit www.grad.gatech.edu/3MT.