Czech Lab Graduate Student Najihah Aziz Wins UMass Chan Medical School Three Minute Thesis Competition

Congratulations to Czech lab PhD student Najihah Aziz, who took first prize in a UMass Chan Medical School Three Minute Thesis competition. Her 180 second talk titled “Fat is not a foe, but a future cure” described how brown fat could be used to treat diabetes. “My goal is to make these brown-like fat cells to function like efficient brown fat.”

Aziz was awarded a silver clock trophy, an all-expense-paid trip to a conference of her choice, and she will represent UMass Chan in a regional competition. Three Minute Thesis (3MT) celebrates research conducted by PhD students around the world. The concept was developed by The University of Queensland in Australia to help students to explain their science at a high level and in lay terms using one slide. The inspiration came during a drought when people were using egg timers to take three-minute showers. Today there are more than 600 universities & institutions in more than 65 countries hosting 3MT competitions.

“This experience helped me think about how to present my science to a nonscientific community and also a scientific community that’s not in my field,” said Aziz. “This was a very challenging thing to do. To simplify it without dumbing it down was very good practice for me.”

 
(L-R) Mary Ellen Lane, PhD, Dean of the UMass Chan Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Graduate Student Najihah Aziz, and Funmi Ayobami, PhD, Associate Dean for Student Success and Engagement, Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.

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