Clarity, Savvy and Making a Difference

Canada’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Winners – A PhD candidate working on the development of a pharmaceutical treatment as an option to delicate surgery is Canada’s Three Minute Thesis champion.

Gah-Jone Won is a doctoral student at the University of Waterloo’s School of Optometry and Vision Science and the Department of Biology. His work focuses on the crystalline lens, a structure within the eye that changes shape in order to focus on nearby objects. As we age, that lens stiffens and loses its ability to focus on nearby objects, a condition called presbyopia.

It was another type of focus and clarity that struck the judges who sought presenters with the communication skill to distill years of work into a three-minute monologue – for a general audience.

Competition judge CBC Ideas Producer Tom Howell said that in addition to Won’s mastery of his topic – “the audience had the sense that you weren’t talking down to us or over-explaining the obvious… it’s sounds easy to avoid those things but it’s actually quite rare. Hold onto that skill!” he told Won.

Gah-Jone said it was important to him to find work that was both personally fulfilling and could make a difference. That has happened in both the lab and in the classroom. “I found I loved teaching – the look on students’ faces when it all comes together – it is great.”

Second place was clinched by Concordia University Mechanical and Industrial Engineering graduate student Ana Maria Medina Ramirez. Her research involves development of a low-cost “metal foam” for potential use in road vehicles. She likened the internal structure to that of a baguette an intriguing image for the audience. (photo attached)

“If I crush my foam, all the energy received from the impact gets trapped and dispersed,” explained Medina Ramirez during her presentation. “It’s like smashing a cracker and a baguette. The cracker will break apart, while the baguette, due to its composition, tends to stabilize itself after impact.”