Winners of the 2020 3MT Undergraduate Student Competition

The winners of the 2020 Summer Undergraduate Research Experience 3MT thesis competition hosted by the Faculty of Science are:

Life Sciences

1st Place:

• Juanita Garcia – “Can we use current to treat orthostatic hypotension after spinal cord injury?”
  Supervisor: Dr. Kristine Cowley, Department of Physiology

2nd Place:

• Kyra Cebula  – “Brain Imaging-Based Biomarker for Alzheimer’s Disease”
  Supervisor: Dr. Ji Hyun Ko, Department of Human Anatomy and Cell Science

Students’ Choice:

• Amy Irvine  – “Friend or Foe: Humpback and Killer whale communication”
  Supervisor: Dr. Gail Davoren, Department of Biological Sciences

Physical, Computational and Data Sciences

1st Place:

• Delica Leboe-McGowan – “Learn Everything, Know Nothing: The Medical Applications of Privacy-Preserving AI”
  Supervisor:  Dr. Noman Mohammed, Department of Computer Science

2nd Place:

• Tasnim Rahman – “Assessing the effects of asymptomaticity and testing on COVID-19 dynamics”
  Supervisor: Dr. Stephanie Portet, Department of Mathematics

Students’ Choice:

• Brydyn Mac Intyre – “The most powerful accelerators in the universe; Can W50 guide us to the Galactic PeVatron?”
  Supervisor: Dr. Samar Safi-Harb, Department of Physics and Astronomy

Forty undergraduate students enrolled in the Faculty of Science Summer Undergraduate Research Program participated in the inaugural 3MT competition, which was virtual and broadcast on YouTube August 11 & 12.

The Faculty of Science congratulates all of our incredibly talented students who participated and the excellent work that went into preparing for the competition. Three Minute Thesis challenges a students’ ability to communicate their ideas and research concisely to a non-specialist audience, in three minutes or less.

Special thanks to our 3MT judges:

• Dr. Stephen Pistorius
  Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy
• Dr. Scott Kroeker
  Professor, Department of Chemistry
• Dr. Karen Brassinga
  Professor, Department of Microbiology
• Ellen Sykes
  PhD Student, Department of Microbiology
• Sarah Flett
  MSc Student, Department of Physiology and Pathophysiology
• Saulo dos Santos
  PhD Student, Department of Computer Science
• Kristen Bouma
  PhD Student, Department of Microbiology

You can watch the presentations on the Faculty of Science YouTube channel.

• August 11 – Life Science presentations – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rb96sh5aekU 
• August 12 – Physical, Computational & Data Sciences presentations – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whbojzlS8Rw