Newswise — When it comes to translating complex research into plain English, the students at The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston can do it in less than two minutes.
Just ask the estimated 150 students and faculty members who helped judge the 10 scientists-in training in the school’s 2016 Elevator Speech Contest on June 30 in the Texas Medical Center.
“Explaining complex topics to a lay audience is no easy task,” said Carrie Cameron, Ph.D., the contest organizer and a Graduate School faculty member. “Everyone did a great job.”
There were multiple categories and two $500 prizes were awarded.
“The student’s personality and creativity come out in a good speech. Good analogies help, too. Last year, we had a student do an elevator speech in the form of a rap song,” said Cameron, noting that the students had 90 seconds to describe their research projects.
Michael McGuire, one of the contestants and a fourth-year student in the school’s cancer biology program, said, “You want to do cool stuff. But if no one else cares, your research is not going anywhere. You want other scientists to be interested in your work.”
McGuire, 27, is doing “cool stuff” in the laboratory of Anil Sood, M.D., a Graduate School faculty member, where the investigators are working on a new treatment for life-threatening types of cancer including ovarian and lung.
“We’re trying to figure out how cancer mutations manipulate their environment to grow and spread,” said McGuire, who rehearsed his speech about 100 times. “It took me five or six hours to write the speech but that was just the beginning.”
To qualify for the contest, students had to submit a video to a panel of reviewers ahead of time. “My mom happened to be in town and videotaped me with an iPhone. That alone took five or six takes,” said McGuire who grew up near Fresno, Calif., and got his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Los Angeles.
McGuire said his speech was over in the blink of an eye. “It’s almost like my speech spilled out of me while I was up there. I was back sitting down before I knew what happened,” said McGuire, who had notes prepared just in case he froze.
McGuire used a house thermostat as a metaphor to explain how cancer mutations use surrounding cells to their advantage. If McGuire has his way, that thermostat will be not be working for cancer cells much longer.
Cameron said, “Some of these students work as much as 60 hours a week. They get so focused that they sometimes forget how much they love what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. When they do that elevator speech, they reconnect with all the energy and passion that brought them to science in the first place. And when that happens, it’s really exciting.”
McGuire received the first place award in the post-candidacy Ph.D. category with Erin Williams earning second place and the People’s Choice Award.
A panel of judges voted on the first and second place awards and everyone in the room got to vote for the People’s Choice Award.
In the pre-candidacy Ph.D. and master’s student category, Swaminathan Kumar won the first place award and Kimiya Memarzadeh earned second place.
The elevator speech contest was part of the Graduate School’s Student Research Day, which also featured an oral presentation skills competition, a poster session and a talk by distinguished alumnus and world-renowned molecular endocrinologist John J. Kopchick, Ph.D.
Established in 1963, the Graduate School has trained more than 2,000 biomedical scientists and is operated by The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
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