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Friday 2 October 2015 10:36am

The SJWRI would like to commend and congratulate forensic anthropology PhD student Jenny McDowell, who was a top-ten finalist in the Trans-Tasman Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition, held on Friday 2 October at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.

Having won the Division of Health Sciences 3MT round in late July and the University of Otago 3MT competition at the end of August, Jenny was the University of Otago representative in the Trans-Tasman 3MT, which welcomed PhD students from from universities across Australia, New Zealand, Oceania and south-east Asia. Fifty competitors were entered into the competition, divided into five semi-final heats. Two semifinalists were selected from each heat to compete in the final. The semi-finals and final were streamed live on the internet via the University of Queensland's threeminutethesis.org website.

Jenny won through from her semi-final heat to compete in the final, with her presentation 'Identifying missing persons: getting answers from our bones'. Jenny's presentation explored her PhD research, which looks at the chemical and morphological changes which happen in juvenile bone when exposed to a marine environment, as a means of understanding marine decomposition of human body parts in a forensic context. While she was not successful in winning the competition, making the final (and thus the top ten) was a magnificent achievement given the exceedingly high quality of the competitors and presentations.

The overall winner of the Trans-Tasman 3MT Competition was Eamonn Fahy of the University of Melbourne's Centre for Eye Research Australia, with his presentation 'Catching the silent thief of sight.' The People's Choice Award was presented to Jaysuman Bin Pusppanathan of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, who presented on 'Tomography for liquid gas imaging.'

You can re-watch the Trans-Tasman 3MT semi-finals and finals via the following link:

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