Australia, 29^th September – UMP PhD student from Faculty of Chemical & Natural Resources Engineering, Ashwin Charles Benedict was crowned the winner for Asia-Pacific 3 Minute Thesis Competition. Ashwin defeated 55 others contestants from Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

What is more interesting, Ashwin was also voted as the winner for People’s Choice Award in the final competition held at University of Queensland and bring home of $1000 research travel grant.

The 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) is a research communication competition developed by University of Queensland to cultivate students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills. Presenting in a 3MT competition increases their capacity to effectively explain their research in three minutes, in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.

Ashwin said, he just couldn’t believe his thesis entitled Catalyzing Change: Light at the end of the Tunnel manage to draw the jury’s attention thus awarded him with $5000 research travel grant as well as funding and entry to the 2017 Falling Walls Lab Final and Conference in Berlin.

 “With full support from Institute of Post Graduates Studies (IPS), Dato’ Dr Hasnah and extensive training session with experienced trainer, Dr. Chiam Kee Swan and Normala Samsudin (CMLHS lecturer),  really does helped to ensure all the research finding can be presented in 3 minutes,” he elaborates further.

Meanwhile, UMP Vice-Chancellor, Professor Dato’ Dr Daing Nasir Ibrahim was very overwhelmed with this achievement. He really hope that this winning will inspire other students to participate in such program and share their research finding in a way that can be understand by others.

Together with Ashwin to the competition were Natalie Vanessa Boyou from UTM that represented Malaysia in the finale in Brisbane Australia.