Two doctoral students from the URJC, winners of the 'Thesis in 3 minutes' contest

Raul Garcia Hemonnet

The challenge was not small. Doctoral students from four Madrid universities (URJC, UAH, UCM and UAM) had to explain their doctoral theses to a non-scientific jury in a way that made them intelligible and attractive.

As Carolina San Martín, director of the International Doctoral School and coordinator of the 'Thesis in 3 Minutes' contest for the URJC, explains, "the participants had to do outreach work to explain to the jury what their research consisted of, what the purpose and how they are achieving it”. To do this, as the name of the contest indicates, they had 3 minutes.

The contest was divided into 5 categories: Engineering and Architecture, Social and Legal Sciences, Sciences, Health Sciences and Art and Humanities

Two of the URJC doctoral students won two of the five contest categories. They are María Cerezo Magaña, for Engineering and Architecture, with her research 'Uncertainty quantification in cooperative aircraft trajectory planning', and Alberto Javier Fidalgo Herrera, for Health Sciences, with his work 'Electromyographic frequency spectrum of muscular behavior during walking'.

According to Carolina San Martín "the students are delighted and it is a recognition that our doctoral students are doing very well". In addition to academic recognition, each of them has received a prize of 500 euros.

The director of the International Doctoral School has added that, in the first two editions "few students signed up but that in this one many more have signed up". A total of 35 doctoral students registered to participate in the preliminary round of the URJC from which one finalist per branch was chosen.

The jury was made up of several journalists: Juan José Becerra (Head of the Supplements Section of El Mundo and Marca), Patricia Fernández de Lis (Chief Editor of Science and Technology of El País and Director of the Materia Ciencia website), Íñigo Picabea Andrés (Editor of the Culture Area and El Ojo Critico of Radio Nacional de España) and Antonio Salvador (Editor and Investigative Journalist of El Independiente). They chose to choose the winner of each category without knowing their University of origin.