I know it’s already 2 weeks but one last blog post about our Three Minutes Postdoc Slam 2018, because it was such a great event! Here are the voices of the winners of this year’s competition:

The First Prize Winner: Dr. Kymora Scotland

“The 3MT slam was a really worthwhile experience. Preparing for the competition helped me to really spend the time needed to figure out how to tailor my approach so that my project could be understood by a diverse audience. Getting it all down to three minutes was a challenge , but I’m now convinced that this is something we scientists should all become comfortable doing. Thank you to the PDA for providing postdocs from such a wide array of fields of study with this opportunity to share our work. It was certainly fascinating to learn about research in fields as disparate as food security and nanomaterial synthesis. I look forward to seeing the talks next year! “

The Second Prize Winner: Dr. Roy van der Meel

“Had a great time at this year’s #3MPS2018 organized by @UBCPostdoc! The 3 minute pitch format really forces you to distill the most important aspects of your research and relay them in an understandable way to a non-specialist audience. The variety of research @UBC was well represented with great pitches on various topics like cancer, asthma, kidney stones (ouch!), mindfulness, food diversity, linguistics and oceanography. I also really enjoyed the insightful and fun talk by @Ng_Dave on science communication and of course the possibility to have a chat and a beer with the other attendees afterwards. I was quite surprised but very happy that I won 2^nd place with my pitch on #nanomedicine and #drugdelivery! For anyone who would like to know more about my research you can find me on Twitter: @rvdmnanomeds!”  

The Third Prize Winner: Dr. Laura Vang Rasmussen

“The postdoc slam was a wonderful event. It provided an opportunity to hear what other people are doing and at the same time learn from their presentations. It also pushed me to boil what I’m working on down to its essence and the presentations sparked further conversations around the various research topics. As I currently work with a multi-country dataset from Africa, it was, for example, very interesting to get feedback from other people who are doing research in some of the same countries, albeit on very different topics.  Overall, it is a really great platform for communication.

Link to the lab which I’m part of:
https://www.landandlives.ca/

Twitter: @rasmussen_vang“

Again, thanks for everyone and see you at next events!

Our annual Three Minutes Postdoc Slam 2018 was a big success! This year, ten participants from various fields share their cutting-edge work at UBC, which sparked some interesting questions and discussions from the floor. 3MPS is such a powerful way to communicate for both the speakers and the curious audience – we learned a lot in such a short period of time!

The heated 3MPS session was followed by a short coffee break and the keynote talk by Prof. David Ng, who gave us some useful insights of how to communicate science from his own experiences as the director of Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory.

At the end of the scientific program, three winners of the 3MPS competition were announced.

After the scientific program, everyone mingled over appies and refereshment. Some interesting ideas on workshops and networking were exchanged… so, please stay tuned for the further development!!

We thank everyone for joining the event – it could not be the same without your participation! We also appreciate all the judges for taking time for this event.  This event was generously supported by Life Science Institute and Provost/the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Office. And last but not the least – the wonderful team of UBC PDA execs!

Have a great summer, everyone!