In three minutes to Krakow: Coimbra Group’s “Three-minute thesis competition”
An exciting doctoral project and three minutes to present it to an audience – that were the rules of the Coimbra Group’s “Three-minute thesis competition” that took place for the second time at Göttingen University on 13 February 2019 drawing the attention of more than one hundred spectators. Ten PhD students from Göttingen accepted the challenge and tried to win over both audience and jury with interesting and entertaining presentations.
The evening was filled with a broad spectrum of fascinating presentations. The topics ranged from the effects of contract farming on smallholders in Africa and marketing to promote healthy products and improve livelihoods, via the molecular mystery of reproduction to three forms of contractarian arguments in political philosophy. The presenters did not make it easy for the jury to decide, but Claudia Schmidt was able to convince them with her presentation about “The recycling system of our cells”. Claudia Schmidt is part of the Research Group Membrane Protein Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry and is doing her doctoral research on protein quality control in the field of cell-biology.
The first runner-up was Georg Hafner with his presentation on “Explorers of the brain”. Georg Hafner is a doctoral student in the field of neuroscience at the Institute for Neuroanatomy at the University Medical Centre (UMG).
The second runner-up, Daniel Chrisendo, presented the topic “The untold story of land use change”. Daniel Chrisendo is doing his PhD research at the Chair of International Food Economics and Rural Development and is an associated member at the Collaborative Research Centre 990.
The event was moderated by Benedict Wild, himself doctoral student at the German Primate Center. In the Jury, three Göttingen graduate schools were represented with members of the respective graduate school boards, Prof. Dr Tobias Georges, Prof. Dr Matin Qaim and Prof. Dr Jörg Stülke. The fourth Jury member was Dr Camille Couralet, head of the Göttingen Campus Office.
Claudia Schmidt’s video will now be sent to the Coimbra Group where a second jury will select the final three contestants among the finalists of the participating universities from all over Europe. The finalists will be invited to join the Coimbra Group Annual Assembly in Krakow on June 5th-7th, where they will present their projects once more and get the chance to win up to € 3000.
You can find some presentations of other participants here.