Penn Graduate Students Compete in Ivy 3MT
April 2019
Penn PhD students Alexander Kasznel (Bioengineering, SEAS) and Hannah Shoenhard (Neuroscience, BGS) represented Penn at the inaugural Ivy 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition held on April 25 at the United Nations. In addition to showcasing their science communication skills and the advanced research they are conducting at Penn, Hannah won second place overall in the competition -- giving Penn some new bragging rights among its peers in the Ivy League.
Alex and Hannah earned their spots as finalists by winning Penn's campus-wide Pitch Your PhD competition held earlier in the month and co-sponsored by the Graduate Student Center and Career Services. Alex's talk, "Engineering Collagen for Better Materials," was based on his work with Associate Professor David Chenoweth's lab group, developing applications for a novel synthetic collagen. Hannah's presentation, "Linking genes to brain in sensation and decision-making," focused on her research with Professor Michael Granato using zebrafish as a model experimental system to study the genetic bases of axonal guidance and motor behaviors.
The first all-Ivy competition of it's kind, the 2019 Ivy 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition was created to celebrate the diverse and impactful scholarly achievements of PhD students across the Ivy League community.
The event featured an introduction and welcoming remarks from Hamid Rashid, Chief of the Development Research Branch - Economic Analysis and Policy Division in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the UN; Elliott Harris, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development and Chief Economist at the UN, and representatives from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University.
Alex and Hannah were among 14 winners of 3MT competitions from Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University who competed by presenting their PhD research in three minutes using only one slide.
The students presented to a large crowd of university representatives, guests, and UN staff, as well as a panel of distinguished judges from the United Nations Development Programme & Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and McKinsey & Company.
Hannah was awarded second place overall, with first place going to Mehraveh Salehi (Electrical Engineering, Yale University) and Bailey Brown (Sociology, Columbia) earning the Audience Choice award.
