The University Postgraduate Centre hosted its 7th annual Postgraduate Symposium which was held in the new venue of WG building. 
The Director of Postgraduate Studies opened the Symposium inviting participants to engage in the scope and quality of postgraduate research presentations before introducing Dr Jennie Billot to welcome keynote speaker, Professor Marilyn Waring to present on ‘Presumption and Knowledge’. A live streaming of the presentation is available on this link.
The day involved postgraduate research students from various faculties presenting on their research and onlook
ers admiring the poster presentations set up in the foyer of level 3 of WG Building. Participants were encouraged to vote for the ‘best poster’ presentation which was awarded to Poster P14 – Master of Science (Food Science) student Tingting Liu for her poster on Physicochemical and sensory characterization of value-added Gnocchi and effects on in vitro digestibility. Well done to all the poster presenters who provided a creative and scientific scope of their research.
The concluding event in the Symposium welcomed the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition where 9 doctoral and Master of Philosophy students were selected from a pre-heats event that took place on Monday 12 August in WG308. The finalists represented disciplinary areas within engineering, sport and recreation, business and law, health, communications, social sciences and public policy were ready to give the audience a short yet simple synopsis of their research in 3 minutes. Easy? – only the finalists would know!
The 3MT judges score cards unanimously awarded the 2013 3MT winner to Jule Kunkel, doctoral candidate from the 
School of Sport and Recreation with her 3MT slide titled Youth taking ownership of a healthier future. Our 3MT runners up were: Don Samarasinghe from Design and Creative Technologies – ‘Securing ideal kiwi homes with right building materials’ and Lucia Davis from Culture and Society – ‘When to put up the christmas tree – the role of mothers in interethnic relationships’. Incidentally, Lucia was also voted the 3MT Audience Favourite – well done! The 3MT prizes were kindly sponsored by AUT Enterprises Ltd, AUT Printsprint, AUT Fitness Centre, AUT ICT and Cyclone Computers.
The 3MT trans-Tasman finals will be held in University of Western Sydney on 18th October where Jule will represent AUT. More information on the trans-Tasman finals will be posted on Thesislink in October along with a live stream link to viewing the finals on the day!
A huge thank you to all the 3MT contestants: Jule Kunkel, Don Samarasinghe, Lucia Davis, Lyn Barnes, Caroline Stretton, Erwin Losekoot, Rouxelle de Villiers, Catherine Crofts and Nikki Mandow!
We will have video footage of the research presentations including the 3MT competition available for viewing on the AUT website soon. Photos will also be made available in the next couple of days – so watch this space.
If you attended the Symposium and would like to provide some feedback on the event, please let us know, we would love to hear from you!
