About

What is the 3MT Competition?

It is an initiative to induce PhD students to present their PhD Thesis in 3 minutes.

Why participate?

Development of skills Participating in 3MT develops academic, presentation, and research communication skills while developing research candidates’ ability to effectively explain their research in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience.

Building research culture at the University. 3MT provides a valuable opportunity for PhD candidates to come together, get to know one another, and talk about their research.

Building external relations 3MT winners may go on to represent their university at the Coimbra Group 3MT competition which provides an excellent networking and professional development opportunity.

Coimbra Group 3MT Competition

The Coimbra Group (CG) 3MT final takes place at the CG Annual Conference. Prior to this, each participating university must select its best candidate and send a video recording of the presentation to the Doctoral Studies Working Group (DS WG), who will then select, from these videos, the 3 finalists who will compete in a live competition at the CG Annual Conference.

History of the 3MT Competition

In 2008, the University of Queensland in Australia held a competition called ‘Three Minute Thesis’ (http://threeminutethesis.org/start-3mt) where Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) candidates explained their research to an ‘intelligent lay audience’ in three minutes with only one slide. Over the following years, the 3MT competition has become a global phenomenon and has been held in multiple institutions across the world.

In June 2017, the Coimbra Group (CG) held its first 3MT final competition during the annual General Assembly at the University of Edinburgh.

Some Coimbra Group member universities ask the winner and the runner-up of their own competition to present their thesis annually at the university senate, university induction event for new doctoral researchers, as well as at other events. These presentations always receive positive feedback.

It is time for the University of Coimbra (UC) to take part in this competition, in order to celebrate the exciting research conducted by its PhD students. The first edition of the UC 3MT Competition was in 2019/2020 and the fourth edition of the UC 3MT Competition took place in 2022/2023.