Gregory LuiWaterloo Engineering doctoral student Gregory Lui is one of 11 Canadian Three Minute Thesis (3MT) finalists who will compete in the national leg of the competition in the next few weeks.

3MT is an international research communication competition that challenges graduate students to articulate the impact of their research in three minutes using just one slide. It is critical that their presentation is both understandable and engaging to a non-technical audience.

Lui, who is currently completing his PhD in chemical engineering, was the winner of the University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition held earlier this year. He went on to compete at the provincial competitions at York University on April 19.

This is the slide that Lui used for the three minutes he had to explain to the 3MT audience his research about how photocatalytic materials could use sunlight to break down pollutants in wastewater and generate electricity.

Lui’s winning presentation, Photocatalysts: Using Today’s Waste to Power the Future, describes how photocatalytic materials could use sunlight to simultaneously break down pollutants in waste water and generate electricity. Lui’s PhD supervisor is Aiping Yu and Michael Fowler is the co-supervisor.

Vote for Waterloo’s 3MT Canadian finalist

You have the opportunity to vote for Lui in the People’s Choice category. The deadline to VOTE is May 30. You can review all 11 finalists presentations.

Canada’s 3MT national champion will be selected by a team of judges – Dr. Alejandro Adem, Chief Executive Officer and Scientific Director, Mitac; Dr.  Valerie Walker, Vice-President, Talent and Skills, Business Council of Canada; and Tom Howell and Nicola Luksic, Producers, CBC Ideas.

All three winners will be announced the first week of June.

The Canadian Association for Graduate Studies (CAGS) sponsors the first place prize which includes $1,500 and an all-expenses-paid trip to the CAGS annual conference. The second place prize is sponsored by the Caisse Populaire Rideau-Vision of Ottawa.

In 2016, Gah-Jone Won, a University of Waterloo doctoral student at the School of Optometry and Vision Science and the Department of Biology, was the Canadian 3MT champion.