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Student scientists are at home in their quiet and scholarly research space. It’s here where familiarity lives and a sense of control reigns. So, when the number of those competing in OHIO’s heart racing, sweat-inducing 3 Minute Thesis (3MT®) Competition keeps increasing annually, you have to simply ask, “Why?”

In the competition, graduate students and doctoral candidates from various disciplines are given three minutes and one non-animated visual slide to convey the sometimes complex nature of their research in lay terms to a panel of judges (mostly non-scientists), faculty, and an audience—kind of like presenting a very short TED Talk. This experience is well outside most competing students’ comfort zone. But they do it because they know that polishing their verbal communication skills is not only “good medicine” to take, but it also makes scientific discovery accessible to all. Silvana Duran Ortiz (LEFT), MSFNS ’14 and current doctoral student in biological sciences and molecular and cellular biology, snagged first place and brought home the People’s Choice Award in the 2018 competition with “Can we extend life-and health-span by decreasing growth hormone action?”

Watch Silvana present her winning 3MT®, “Extending healthy lifespan: Is Growth Hormone the key?”

Feature photograph by Madeleine Hordinski, BSVC ’20