Dartmouth Engineering Student Wins Ivy Collective Symposium's Three-Minute Thesis Competition

Engineering PhD candidate Ene Michelle Igomu presents at the Three-Minute Thesis competition. (Photo by Julie Yun)

Igomu was among nine finalists selected to present at the bi-annual symposium. In her presentation, "Revolutionizing 3D Catalyst Design for Green Hydrogen Production," Igomu described an innovation that holds significant promise for green hydrogen production and sustainable energy technologies—3D catalytic converters printed using earth-abundant materials that can reduce carbon footprint by 90% while increasing efficiency by up to 80%.

The 3MT competition, which originated at the University of Queensland in Australia, challenges students to distill complex research into an engaging three-minute presentation that can be understood widely by a general audience using only a single, static slide as a visual aid.

Student presenters were evaluated by a panel of university science communications leaders for their ability to tell a compelling story that articulates the "why" behind their research and clearly demonstrates real-world impact.

Princeton's Isabel Moreira de Oliveira won second place for her presentation, "Spacecuts: Turning Thin Sheets into Stiff Space Frames." Third place went to Brown's Vivek Oommen for his presentation, "Generative AI: A New Era for Weather Forecasting."

A partial gathering of Dartmouth Engineering participants in the Ivy Collective Symposium: (front) Allaire Doussan, (back l to r) Yanqiao Li, Isaiah Richardson, Madeline Hoey, Xiangbei Liu, Bruno Henrique, Ene Michelle Igomu, Sadaf Tabatabaei, Bahlakoana Mabetha, Aida Aghaeizadeh Kamakoli, and Professor Petra Bonfert-Taylor.

Dartmouth Engineering finalists included PhD Innovation Program fellow and fifth-year doctoral student Allaire Doussan, who presented, "Bioimpedance Detects Cancer in Real-Time," and PhD candidate Yanqiao Li for his presentation titled, "Towards Autonomous Microrobots: An Efficient Driving Circuit with Energy Recycling."

The Ivy Collective for Inclusion in Engineering was founded in 2020 with the goal of expanding access and inclusion in the engineering, computer science, and applied sciences fields through professional development, networking opportunities, and career support. This year's doctoral symposium drew close to 150 PhD students and researchers from Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Princeton, and Yale.