Grad students create winning research videos

Wednesday, February 7, 2024

Three Waterloo Engineering graduate students wowed the judges at this year’s GRADflix competition with creative video shorts describing their research. 

Out of 162 entrants, Liam Bursey (architectural engineering), Nada Gohider (electrical and computer engineering) and Mohammad Ahmed Basri (systems design engineering) made it into the final 15 with Bursey taking second place and Gohider coming in fourth.  

GRADflix is an annual competition that gives graduate students an opportunity to communicate their amazing and complex research to a broader public audience. They can create a video, moving slide show or animation of no longer than 60 seconds. There are four prizes of $750 (1st place), $500 (2nd place) and $250 (3rd and 4th place) and two awards of $250 each for Social Impact and People’s Choice. 

The finalists expressed how much they enjoyed the process, calling it a “creative breather from writing academic papers”. Beyond having fun with it, the exercise helps grad students flex their sales muscles and learn how to translate often quite technical research into an accessible and engaging format. A previous GRADflix winner commented that they still use their 60 second video as part of their research funding drive.  

Enjoy our Engineering Graduate students’ videos!

Go to Meet our 2024 finalists and watch all 15 finalists’ videos – they're great! 

GRADflix was launched in 2018 by the University of Waterloo’s Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA) and is supported by graduate students through the Graduate Studies Endowment Fund.

Find out more about the graduate programs, degrees and research opportunities offered by the Faculty of Engineering.