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Tuesday 10 August 2021 9:23am

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3MT doctoral runner-up Patrick Boudreau (Tourism), doctoral and Peoples' Choice Award winner Pradeesh Parameswaran (Computer Science) and master's winner Giverny Forbes (Zoology).

One student is working on combatting cyberbullying using computer science to detect sarcasm, the other is documenting human interactions with leopard seals to better inform their management and while their topics are vastly different they are both winners of this year’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition.

PhD candidate Pradeesh Parameswaran (Computer Science) won the doctoral section of the competition, as well as the Peoples’ Choice Award, master's candidate Giverny Forbes (Zoology) won her category and Patrick Boudreau (Tourism) was runner-up for the doctoral prize.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) Professor Richard Blaikie, Associate Professor Tamlin Conner and Craig Meade, General Manager/Executive Producer of WildBear Entertainment, acted as judges for the competition.

Professor Blaikie remarked it was a uniformly outstanding competition.

Pradeesh’s topic was: Detecting the target of sarcasm is hard: Really?

He says there is a very toxic culture on the internet, with the most common targets of the toxicity being minorities.

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Judges Craig Meade, General Manager/Executive Producer of WildBear Entertainment, Associate Professor Tamlin Conner and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research & Enterprise) Professor Richard Blaikie.

With New Zealand ranking number four in the world for cyberbullying, and much of what is said online being sarcastic. Pradeesh’s research investigates whether a computer can detect the target of sarcasm or not.

“I wanted to find out if you can actually combat cyberbullying by detecting sarcasm."

However, because sarcasm is subjective even humans have a hard time picking it up. So, teaching a computer to do so has been difficult so far.

Pradeesh hasn’t given up hope he’ll solve it eventually.

He entered the competition so as not to lose out on an opportunity to live in the moment, he says.

“I’m really honoured and humbled. I’d really liked to thank the people who voted for me and the judges.”

Giverny’s introduction to her thesis study wasn’t typical – a leopard seal, named Owha, looming over her in the Auckland marina.

Her research is investigating the perceived impacts of human-leopard seal cohabitation in New Zealand and the goal is to support the wellbeing of both.

She says she entered the 3MT Competition to challenge herself, but also to promote her research to a wider audience.

Pradeesh was awarded $750 for winning and the opportunity to compete in the Asia-Pacific 3MT Competition.

Giverny was awarded $500. They both have the opportunity to compete in the Matariki Network of Universities 3MT Competition.

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