San Jose State’s graduate students will prepare to present their research next Tuesday in the College of Graduate Studies Grad Slam event.
Grad Slam is a research communication competition where graduate students have three minutes and one slide to present their research to a non-specialist audience, according to the San Jose State website.
The annual event will take place at the Hammer Theatre on April 25 at 2 p.m.
Marc d’Alarcao, dean of the College of Graduate Studies, said finalists are chosen from a committee of three people who evaluate each graduate students’ three minute video.
During the Grad Slam, judges chosen by the college select the winners of the event.
“We have some alumni, we have some industry folks who come in and evaluate the presentations and select the first and second place winner,” d’Alarcao said. “And then we have an Audience Choice Award winner, which is selected by the audience who views the competition.”
Mechanical engineering graduate student Antonio Cervantes said he was encouraged by his professor to participate in this year’s Grad Slam.
“That kind of gave me the push to want to just go for it,” Cervantes said.
Cervantes’ presentation is focused on wildfire embers, modeling their trajectories and landing location.
“One of the goals of the Grad Slam was to allow graduate students’ activities to be presented publicly to allow the community both within the university and outside to see the kind of great work that they’re doing,” d'Alarcao said.
Cervantes said the hardest part of Grad Slam for him was fitting all of his research in the three minute time slot.
“All students who participate go through, like, as I was saying, a professional development opportunity,” d’Alarcao said.
He said the idea for Grad Slam came from the University of Queensland’s similar competition named Three Minute Thesis.
“What we have found here is that it’s a very valuable competition for us, primarily because it benefits the students . . . but also because it helps communicate to the world all the great research and other creative activity that’s going on here at San Jose State,” d’Alarcao said.
He said he hopes to see more students participate.
“I think there’s no reason why every member of the campus community shouldn’t watch it,” d’Alarcao said. “It’s really a cool event.”
Cervantes said he believes showcasing the work graduate students are doing is important.
“I had to step outside of the whole body of work and just choose what I thought to me was, like, the most important parts of my research,” Cervantes said.
He said participating in the Grad Slam taught him how to take a complicated topic and translate it to people who are not experts in the field.
Statistics graduate student John Cooper is presenting his research on fast acquisition for high resolution microscopy.
He said participating in the event is a good way to gauge your ability to convey research.
“I also work at a laboratory where we have to talk to people and give presentations so this kind of just hones in on that,” Cooper said. “I think every opportunity to speak to a group of people is a good and useful opportunity.”
Cooper said the hardest part was making the video.
“You’re explaining a lot of technical stuff in a short amount of time and that's always the hardest part about it,” Cooper said. “The video recording process is always weird because you’re not really talking to anybody, you don’t have an audience.”
Data analytics graduate student Sachin Kumar Srinivasa Murthy said Grad Slam allows him to showcase his research on building a new information system to track the shift and skill demand in the job market.
“It’s always good to showcase what you’re doing and get feedback from people around you who are in the same domain,” Srinivasa Murthy said. “When you showcase it, when you talk about it, experts get to take notice of what you’re doing and they can provide their feedback.”
He said he has acquired a better ability of presenting through the process of making his video.
“So personally, it has helped me with communication and presentation skills and also it has given me confidence in the subject that I’m conducting research in,” Srinivasa Murthy said. “I would have not been a subject matter expert in this field if I had not talked about it, and if I have not gotten this opportunity.”
