Three minutes is all the time you get in the Grad Slam to present what in some cases may be years of research. Three minutes in which you — as a master’s or doctoral student in any discipline — must cover the significance of your research and its fundamental points. And you’ve got to keep it interesting.

Competitors are advised to prepare their talks for a diverse audience of students, faculty and community members. Judges will strongly consider clarity and effectiveness of the presentation for a general university audience. 

Whoever does it best in the UC Davis Grad Slam finals this Friday (April 14) will move on to the UC Grad Slam, where a $5,000 prize awaits the winner from among UC’s 10 campuses. The Davis campus will award $1,000 for first place, $500 for second and $250 for third.

This year’s campus competition drew more than 80 proposals, more than double last year’s number. A qualifying event was held Feb. 28 to winnow the field to 10.  

Here are the finalists (listed with their graduate programs):

• Carina Fish, Geology
• Donald Gibson, Integrative Genetics and Genomics 
• Omar Hafez, Civil Engineering
• Mike Huh, Geology
• Maci Mueller, Animal Biology
• Marc Pollack, Microbiology
• Telha Rehman, Horticulture and Agronomy
• Alex Schmidt, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
• Sam Westreich, Integrative Genetics and Genomics
• Youyou Zhang, Civil Engineering

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