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Five things to know about… the three-minute thesis competition.

Left to right, Lihao Yan, Arya Ökten, Yanyu Zhao, Jenna Andrews, Ethan A.Lerner, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Lynn Cooley, Alicia E. Ellis, Laura Stevens, Meera Choi, Alev Baysoy, Theodoros Trochatos, and Leonardo de Siqueira Lima. (Photo by Stephanie Anestis)

Every year, Yale’s Three-Minute Thesis Competition provides Ph.D. students with an opportunity to step away from the fog of their dissertation research and tell the world exactly what it is they are trying to achieve.

In three minutes.

The competition, known as 3MT, requires students to present their theses in a succinct, clear, and compelling way before a panel of judges. Winners receive a cash prize and bragging rights. But everyone who competes likely comes away understanding their research better and feeling more confident about public speaking, said Suzanne Young, the assistant dean for graduate student professional development in the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), which sponsors the competition.

“ This is really going back to the roots of public speaking, where it’s about you, your voice, your intelligence, and your quickness on your feet while presenting to people who might be reacting to you in the moment,” she said.

Yale News caught up with Young just before this year’s event on April 12. (See this year’s winners in accompanying box.) Here are five takeaways.

Yale’s 3MT competition is modeled after one founded by the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia.

The original 3MT was held at UQ in 2008. The concept gradually spread throughout Australia and then abroad. Competitions are now held at more than 900 universities in more than 85 countries, according to UQ’s 3MT website.

For Yale’s competition, which debuted in 2017, registration opens in January. Most years, about 35 to 40 students sign up. A first-round competition is held in late February. The 10 winners chosen during that round go on to the April finals.

The competition is not just for students in the STEM fields.

Students compete in one of five categories: biology, engineering, humanities, physical science, and social science. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the entrants tend to be weighted toward the sciences.

“ In biology, contestants are talking about different ways to attack cancer, and in astronomy, different ways to understand dark matter,” Young said. “The stakes of those questions are pretty straightforward and obvious. I think that helps STEM candidates come to this competition more eagerly.”

But humanities students stand to gain a lot from the preparation required for the competition, and Young encourages them to give it a try. She knows from her own experience writing an English dissertation that the long process involved in shaping a thesis — including questioning, researching, and reading — can at times make the project feel “a bit amorphous.”

“ Having to say, ‘here’s why this matters, here are the key central ideas, here’s what I hope to change about the field, here are the stakes of what I’m doing’ — that clarity can be really welcome and helpful,” she said.

Presentations must include a single PowerPoint slide, but the use of any other technology or prop is prohibited.

In such a technology-dependent culture, this rule might seem outdated. But prohibiting technological enhancements and other distractions keeps the focus on the speaker, Young said. The single slide is intended to be an adjunct to what the speaker is saying and not a focus itself.

“ We’ve all been to talks where you have to decide whether you’re going to listen to the speaker or read the slides,” she said. “We want this to be a live moment of public speaking and all the challenges that come with that.”

Coaching is available to all competitors.

All participants are encouraged to prepare for their presentations by pursuing the Certificate for Public Communication , through the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. As soon as they sign up for the 3MT, they receive an email link to the certificate page. They also have access to coaching and advice from Young, as well as staff in the Office of Career Strategy and the Graduate Writing Lab.

“ We really emphasize the power of preparation and feedback,” Young said.

The judges in the competition are Yale alumni.

The final round takes place before a panel of judges comprised of accomplished Yale GSAS alumni representing a mix of disciplines and Lynn Cooley, dean of the graduate school. After the presentations, the judges leave the auditorium to confer. The audience — both those in the auditorium and those watching via the live stream — is then invited to vote for two entrants to receive the “People’s Choice” award. And there is entertainment — this year, the graduate and professional school a cappella group, the Citations, performed.

Eventually, the judges troop back in and announce the first-, second- and third-place winners. Each poses with an oversized cardboard check (prizes range from $300 to $1,000 for first place).

“ We try to make it fun, and a bit of a spectacle,” Young said.

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SEAS master's project, thesis address life cycle and carbon impact of maple syrup production

Image Caption Maple sap being transformed to maple syrup at a sugar shack.

In Fall 2022, the Center for Sustainable Systems (CSS) at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) received a $500,000 research grant through the  United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Acer Access and Development Program to conduct a life cycle assessment (LCA) for maple syrup production. As a result of the grant, SEAS students worked on a master’s project and thesis centered on maple syrup production. Both of these projects were advised by CSS researcher and SEAS adjunct lecturer Geoffrey Lewis. 

SEAS students Jenna Weinstein, Zhu Zhu, Yuan-Chi Li and Thu Rain Yi Win were part of the master’s project team, which involved collaborating with maple syrup producers to produce a life cycle assessment model of maple syrup retail distribution.

SEAS student Spencer Checkoway worked in tandem with the master’s project team on his own thesis, which is focused on the carbon footprint of maple syrup production. 

According to Checkoway, a public life cycle assessment on maple syrup production had never been conducted prior to the LCA initiated by this grant funding.

Zhu, who is focused on the sustainable systems track at SEAS like his fellow master’s project colleagues, was interested in the master’s project because of the skills they could develop working on a LCA.

“I was very interested in understanding how to conduct a life cycle assessment and how to decarbonize the production cycle,” he said. 

Likewise, Weinstein felt like it was a great way to apply what she had learned in her sustainable systems classes to a real-world project. 

“Sustainable system courses focused on long-term thinking about the system impacts,” she said. “We are not just thinking about production in the scope of glass versus plastic, but we are thinking about the distribution impacts throughout each decision of the life cycle process.” 

Before looking at the impacts of maple syrup production or conducting an LCA, Weinstein noted that the team had to first understand what maple syrup entails by focusing on stakeholder engagement. 

Weinstein said the interviews with maple syrup producers were important because they allowed the students to shape their master’s project to the needs of the producers and to the skills they wanted to develop. 

“I have realized that even the most quantitative projects should still begin with stakeholder engagement to give context to whatever quantitative model you are creating in order to create an output that meets community needs,” she said. “If all an LCA is telling us is to use reverse osmosis, we are not getting at the deeper issue.”

Zhu saw that it was important for the team to understand each component of maple syrup from the producers so they could figure out what variables to include in the quantitative analysis component of the project.

“We did interviews with maple syrup producers to get data about packing materials, from the weight of materials to where they got materials,” he said. “We also wanted to know about their transportation methods.” 

The team used the original survey data they collected through interviews with maple syrup producers to model the LCA, Weinstein said.

“Based on the themes that we saw in the interviews, some people [on the team] focused on the theme of package distribution and addressing the central question of what are life cycle impacts of different package types,” she said. 

According to Weinstein, this model allows producers to input the decisions they are making in their sugar bush about their fuel sources, where it is located and the materials they are using. The model outputs an analysis of the life cycle and carbon impacts of the production.

Lewis said a life cycle assessment is an important component of the project because it will help to produce an online carbon footprint calculator tool, which is a deliverable the CSS promised in the grant application.

“In order to do [the online calculator tool] we have to understand the process of maple syrup production, and that varies by size of the producer,” he said. “We had to make sure the calculator can accommodate all variables, from how much wood a producer is using to how much tubing was installed, so anyone who makes syrup can go into the calculator with their parameters and equipment to determine the emissions per gallon of syrup they are producing.”

While the master’s project focused on modeling a maple syrup distribution model, Checkoway focused on the carbon footprint of maple syrup production for his thesis. 

Like the master’s project team, Checkoway began by meeting with maple syrup producers at maple syrup conferences in Michigan. He noted that the maple syrup producer community is an extremely collaborative and open community.

“I met with producers to build data around what sugar makers are doing and what practices they are performing,” he said. “These conferences are like trade shows, specific to maple syrup technology. There is a real exchange of information on topics from reverse osmosis to how to yield more sap or increase the production rates.”

Checkoway collected data focusing on carbon footprints and accounting. 

“Producers submitted each step of their production, as well as what equipment and fuel they were using,” he said. “They also submitted the water and solid waste they produced.”

With these data, Checkoway has worked on a carbon accounting model and published two reports for his thesis. According to Checkoway, this model will help to inform the online calculator tool.

“I built submodels that producers can access and use for specific processes to account for their carbon and energy emissions,” he said.  

Checkoway highlighted that the work funded by the grant, to aid in decarbonizing maple syrup production, is not complete. 

“The grant is funding three years of research,” he said. “The goal is to collect data from producers over three full seasons and produce an LCA to see how things are changing over those three years.”

Lewis hopes that the models created by the master’s project and thesis can be used to compare maple syrup production to the production of other sweeteners.

“Down the line, we could use these models to make comparisons with other sweeteners like corn syrup,” he said.

Checkoway said his thesis and the master’s project can create a collective body of work that allows maple syrup producers to make rational decisions about the sustainability of their product. 

“I hope that producers can look at [the models and calculator] and become aware of the climate impact of maple syrup to understand how they can mitigate those impacts,” he said. 

Weinstein views this project as an opportunity to empower maple syrup producers to make informed decisions with easily accessible information.

“We are trying to make it as easy as possible to give [producers] access to the best information possible,” she said. “This is a tool for them to take on the work of reducing their impacts to whatever extent they are willing to.” 

Lewis would like this project to raise the profile of maple syrup production, what is involved in making syrup, and how production can be done in a more sustainable way. 

“It takes a lot of energy to make maple syrup,” he said. “But what has been great about doing this project is that people always smile when they hear us talk about maple syrup.”

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Closing Reception: 2024 MFA Thesis Exhibition

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Meet this year's MFA students and glimpse the future of visual art!

Join the University of Arizona Museum of Art and School of Art in celebrating the 2024 Master of Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition . The reception is free and open to the public, and refreshments will be served.

This exhibition is the culmination of the Master of Fine Arts Studio Degree and is presented during a graduate student’s final semester in the program. During the last year of their coursework, graduates work closely with faculty to develop a body of original art to present to the public in lieu of a written thesis.

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Opening statements in Trump's historic trial set to begin Monday after tense day of jury selection

Opening statements are set to begin next week in Donald Trump’s historic criminal trial after the final members of the jury were seated Friday, following a dramatic day in which two prospective jurors broke down in tears, an appeals court judge rejected Trump's request for a stay, and a man set himself on fire in front of the courthouse.

“We’re going to have opening statements on Monday morning. This trial is starting,” Judge Juan Merchan said towards the end of the day, after successfully seating the remaining five alternate jurors that were needed.

The case — the first-ever criminal trial of a former president —will be heard by a panel of 12 jurors and a total of six alternates. It's expected to last roughly six weeks.

The five alternates ultimately selected Friday include an unemployed married woman who’s into art and described herself as not political, an audio professional, a contract specialist, a clothing company executive and a construction company project manager. It took four days of jury selection to find the 18 jurors.

Around the same time the judge declared, "we have our full panel" inside the courtroom in the early afternoon, a man set himself on fire outside the courthouse. The NYPD said the man, identified as Max Azzarello of Florida, later died. He appeared to have had pamphlets describing a conspiracy involving cryptocurrency that he threw around before setting himself ablaze, police said.

Later in the afternoon, Trump's attorneys were in a state appeals court trying again to get an emergency stay of the trial. Trump attorney Cliff Robert argued his client could not get a fair trial in Manhattan, which had been Trump's longtime home before moving to Florida after he was elected president in 2016.

Steven Wu of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office countered that "what the last week has shown is that the jury selection has worked."

"We have 18 ordinary New Yorkers who are ready to serve. It would be unfair to them and the public for this to be delayed further," he argued. The judge rejected Trump's stay request a short time later.  

The jury selection process Friday was especially intense, some potential jurors breaking down in tears and others saying they were too anxious to serve.

The day began with the judge calling up the 22 remaining potential jurors from the previous pool of 96 to answer questions designed to indicate whether they could be fair and impartial about the divisive real estate mogul and presumptive Republican nominee for president.

The first of those potential jurors was dismissed after she said she didn’t think she could be fair. “I have really, really bad anxiety and people have found out where I am,” she told the judge. A short time later, two other potential jurors were dismissed after each told the judge that upon further reflection, “I don’t think I can be impartial.”

Other potential jurors included a married father who said he listens to a podcast called “Order of Man,” which is described on Apple’s website as discussions about “reclaiming what it means to be a man.” Some past guests of the podcast include people who’ve been outspoken in their support of Trump and were highly critical of the civil fraud case New York Attorney General Letitia James brought against the former president. The man, an audio specialist, was chosen as one of the alternates.

Another potential juror was a married fund manager who said he’d done “get-out-the-vote” work for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 presidential opponent. Trump and his attorney Todd Blanche passed notes back and forth while that juror was speaking. He was later dismissed after being asked about a 2020 Facebook post where he apparently called Trump “the devil and a sociopath.”

Trump appeared most interested in jurors whose answers offer ambiguity around their personal political views. When one prospective juror said they were a Fox News viewer, Trump cocked his head, then quickly conferred with his lawyer, Todd Blanche.

Another potential juror was a woman who became emotional as she disclosed she'd served two years in prison on drug-related charges, but said she could be "fair and impartial."

During a morning break, Merchan — who'd chided reporters on Thursday for disclosing too much information about potential jurors — said the woman had shared "very personal things about her life" and was "very brave." “I just wanted to encourage the press to please be kind. Please be kind to this person,” the judge said. He later dismissed her, saying she needed a certificate of release to be qualified for service going forward. On her way out, she cheerfully called out, "Good luck!"

Following that juror's departure, the DA's office began its individual questioning of the jurors. One woman, who'd disclosed that her father is lifelong friends with Trump ally turned critic Chris Christie, broke down in tears when prosecutor Susan Hoffinger asked her an innocuous question about the burden of proof in the case. "I feel so nervous and anxious right now. I’m sorry," she responded, bursting out into tears. "I thought I could do this," she said, adding "I wouldn’t want someone who feels this way to judge my case." She was dismissed.

Hoffinger's questioning was followed by Trump attorney Susan Necheles, who asked a potential juror who'd started their own business how she would assess a witness's credibility. The woman then asked to speak to the judge, saying she was "getting anxiety and self-doubt” from Necheles's line of questioning. She was dismissed. 

Necheles later asked another woman — who previously said she was a victim of sexual assault — whether she would hold it against Trump that women outside this case have accused Trump of sexual assault. She said she would not have a problem setting those accusations aside but the judge ultimately excused her, saying, "It’s best to err on the side of caution."

Another man said he has some differences from Trump on his policies but thinks he's “usually awesome.” He was not chosen for the jury.

On his way into court in the morning, Trump again complained the case against him is "unfair," and that the partial gag order preventing him from lashing out at witnesses, prosecutors, court staffers and jurors is not "constitutional." "Everyone else can say whatever they want about me. They can say anything they want. They can continue to make up lies and everything else. They lie. They’re real scum. But you know what? I’m not allowed to speak," he told reporters.

Prosecutors this week asked the judge to fine Trump and hold him in contempt for social media posts that they said violate the gag order. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Tuesday.

The m a in pa nel of 12 is made up of seven men and five women, including two lawyers, a teacher, a retired wealth manager, a product development manager, a security engineer, a software engineer, a speech therapist and a physical therapist. The foreman — the juror who essentially acts as the leader and spokesperson for the panel — is a married man who works in sales and gets his news from The New York Times, MSNBC and Fox News.

The lone alternate selected Thursday is a woman who works as an asset manager.

Trump vented about the speed of the process in a post on social media shortly after the final jurors were selected, claiming the judge is “‘railroading’ me, at breakneck speed, in order to completely satisfy his ‘friends’.”

Later in the day, Merchan held what's known as a Sandoval hearing . That's a type of hearing designed to let defendants know the scope of questions they could face from prosecutors on cross-examination so they can make informed decisions about whether to take the witness stand in their own defense.

Leaving court on Friday, Trump was asked whether he was still planning to testify and he said he was.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office disclosed in a court filing that it would like to ask Trump about several items, among them the $464 million civil judgment against him and his company for fraud , the total $88 million verdicts and liability findings for sexual abuse  and  defamation in lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll and a number of other adverse court rulings over the past few years.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in all the cases and is appealing  the fraud judgment and the Carroll verdicts.

Prosecutors said they want to be able to bring those findings up “to impeach the credibility of the defendant” if he takes the witness stand.

Discussing the findings in the fraud case, prosecutor Matthew Colangelo told the judge it was "hard to think of something that is more squarely in the wheelhouse” for the DA to ask Trump about "than a finding by a judge of persistent and repeated fraud and illegality."

Trump's attorney Emil Bove countered that prosecutors shouldn't be able to breach the topic at all because Trump's appeal is still pending. He made similar arguments over the DA's contention that they should be allowed to ask about a judge's finding that he was untruthful on the witness stand during the fraud trial and had violated a gag order in the case.

“Is it your position that because a case is being appealed or might be appealed, that therefore it can not be used?" Merchan asked the lawyer. "Not necessarily," Bove replied.

The judge said he'd issue his ruling on the dispute on Monday morning.

Trump said last week he  “absolutely” plans to testify , but he is under no obligation to do so.

Asked by Necheles at the end of the day who the DA's first witness would be, prosecutor Joshua Steinglass said they wouldn't inform Trump's team of the person's identity until Sunday, given that Trump has been criticizing some witnesses on social media despite the partial gag order in the case. “And if that should be tweeted, that’ll be the last time we provide that courtesy,” Steinglass said.

Merchan called the DA's position "understandable" and told Necheles "I will not compel them to do anything."

Trump has pleaded  not guilty  to 34 counts of falsifying business records and faces up to four years in prison if he is convicted.

Bragg alleges that Trump falsified records to hide money he was paying his former lawyer Michael Cohen to reimburse him for $130,000 he paid adult film actor Stormy Daniels  near the end of the 2016 presidential campaign. Daniels has claimed she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006. Trump has denied that he slept with Daniels, but he has acknowledged repaying Cohen.

The DA’s office also alleges that as part of a scheme to boost Trump, National Enquirer publisher American Media Inc. paid $150,000 to model and actor Karen McDougal , who appeared in Playboy magazine and claimed that she had a nine-month affair with Trump before he was elected president “in exchange for her agreement not to speak out about the alleged sexual relationship,” according to a statement of facts filed by Bragg.

Trump has also denied having a sexual relationship with McDougal.

Adam Reiss is a reporter and producer for NBC and MSNBC.

Lisa Rubin is an MSNBC legal correspondent and a former litigator.

Dareh Gregorian is a politics reporter for NBC News.