Vivian Shen, 2025 First Place Winner
Carnegie Mellon University’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition pits doctoral students against the clock and each other to explain complex research and captivate their audience in just three minutes. Each year, 10 Ph.D. students from schools and colleges across CMU compete to gain early career recognition, connect with the campus community, and win prizes of up to $3,000.
We asked Entertainment Technology Center Assistant Teaching Professor Vivian Shen, who won first place in the 2025 3MT Championship, a few questions about her experience and how it shaped her journey.
Q: Share a bit about your area of study/research at CMU. What did you focus on for your 3MT presentation?
A: I am getting my Ph.D. at the Robotics Institute, but all of my research and my lab is with the Human Computer Interaction Institute. When I competed in 3MT I was a fifth year Ph.D. post-proposal, so I just focused on my thesis topic: Novel Haptic Interfaces.
Q: How did preparing for 3MT assist you with the rest of your Ph.D. program, including completing your dissertation?
A: 3MT helped me a lot specifically in distilling my thesis topic into a very digestible format. I still reference my 3MT video when introducing new people to my research area; it is great to have this resource I can point to and say “watch this very short three-minute video on my thesis topic if you want to know more!” This further helped me in prepping for job-related and other talks down the line; I have both a 10 and 15 minute version of my thesis talk that I have given to various audiences, and starting with going all the way down to three minutes helped a lot with shaping those talks.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you encountered during the competition? What was your favorite part?
A: The hardest part was definitely taking something so technical and engineering/psychology term heavy as my thesis topic, and making it understandable to a wide audience. Part of that is that it can be hard to let go of the pride you feel in the specific technicalities of your research, but talking about really detailed aspects can really make your work feel unapproachable to others. Being able to convey the complexities of my research while making it sound interesting to a broad range of people was a fun challenge!
On the other hand, the best part by far was listening to other 3MT presentations. I had such a good time learning about the research of people from vastly different backgrounds than my own. Realistically speaking, I would probably never find myself attending a thesis defense of a stranger in a different department, because for most departments I wouldn’t have the requisite knowledge to fully appreciate (or sometimes even remotely understand) what they were talking about. However, the 3MT let me feel like I DID get what people are working on, and I was reminded of how much cool research is happening all around CMU.
Q: 3MT winners, from both the preliminary rounds and the finals, receive a monetary prize. How did that help you on your journey?
A: I had a large group of friends support me at the 3MT finals, which really helped me feel comfortable presenting because I just pretended I was presenting to them. The first thing I did when I got the monetary prize was treat them all to dinner, which was really fun!
Really though, the best thing that the 3MT brought me was exposure. I have had so many random people say something like “wait, did you win 3MT this year? I saw your video!” I also shared my own 3MT on social media, and for a lot of my non-grad school friends it was the first time they learned about my thesis topic.
Q: What are you working on today?
A: Crazily enough, I just started as an Assistant Professor in the Entertainment Technology Center, which is a department under the University Libraries, host of 3MT! I applied to this position a couple months after winning 3MT, and I genuinely think it helped me secure this job. Multiple people who interviewed me were familiar with my work because of the 3MT, and had either met me or heard of me before. I am so excited to be here, working on the forefront of crazy technology for entertainment, and I’m also so happy to be staying at CMU. I’m even helping to judge 3MT this year, as faculty!
Q: What advice would you give to students considering 3MT this year?
A: This is probably the advice you’d get for any talk, but my advice would be to practice practice practice. Unlike a job talk or your thesis, it’s extremely easy to practice a 3 minute talk over and over. Since you have to memorize the whole talk, think of key points in the talk that will help you get back on track if you go off script a little; maybe make a mnemonic device to help you order your talking points correctly.
Also, I think PhD students often have the tendency to be modest about what they’ve accomplished, but now is not the time to do that. Think about the big and broad impacts of your work and tie those into your talk. This is a show more than it is a technical evaluation of your work, so really get the audience excited about what you do!
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to share about how your experience has impacted you?
A: Nope, but I can’t wait to see what talks people have this year!