Third-year agricultural and biosystems engineering Ph.D. student Bailey Adams won first place in Iowa State University’s fifth annual Three Minute Thesis competition.
Three Minute Thesis (3MT) celebrates research conducted by master’s or Ph.D. students around the world. Developed by the University of Queensland, the competition cultivates students’ academic, presentation and research communication skills. Presenting in a 3MT competition increases a student’s capacity to explain their research in a short amount of time and in a vocabulary appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Competitors are allowed one static PowerPoint slide, but no other resources or props.
Iowa State students across campus participate in preliminary competitions, with seven selected to vie for top ISU honors this year, including first place, runner-up and People’s Choice.
Adams presented “Sprayer Chassis Suspension Optimization for Improved Boom Performance,” which focuses on utilizing the capabilities of model-based design to develop an experimental adaptive chassis suspension system in hopes of reducing self-propelled sprayer system disturbances and increasing boom height stability for more even chemical application during the spraying season. More generally, his research concentrates on data analytics and state-of-the-art virtual engineering techniques to answer questions about agricultural machinery systems and improve agricultural machinery performance.
“I’d like to personally compliment all of my fellow participants of this year’s Three Minute Thesis for not only competing but also for having the willingness to share and communicate your research with others in the first place,” Adams said. “This is not an easy task to do in only three minutes, but it definitely is an outstanding professional development opportunity for all of us, and it builds upon our skillsets as young researchers. Furthermore, I’d also like to thank the Graduate College and the 3MT Planning Committee on hosting a successful competition in this year’s virtual format.”
All seven finalists’ presentations can be viewed in a YouTube video.
More information about Adams and his Three Minute Thesis research is available on the ISU Graduate College website.