Explaining the complexities of brain surgery using lasers as neurosurgical tools in three minutes with only a single slide is challenging enough, but doing it in your second language on a national stage is simply amazing.
Cara (Chenman) Yin, a master’s student in physics, was recently awarded the People's Choice Award at the national Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT) for her presentation “Seeing the world at the tip of a laser beam,” which explains her ongoing research into the use of lasers as tools to cut bone with a new level of precision to improve outcomes in brain surgery.
Initially entering the 3MT competition as a fun way to challenge herself, Ms. Yin made her way through the preliminary competition held locally by the School of Graduate Studies with support from the QUAA Grants and Loans program, which would ultimately send her to the national competition.
In a recent article in the Queen’s Gazette, Ms. Yin explained how she prepared for the 3MT national, “For the Ontario final, I really wanted to do well because I am not just representing myself but also Queen's. Queen's School of Graduate Studies helped me prep for the provincial competition which was extremely valuable.”
All of the competing presentations are available on video, including Ms. Yin’s, which features an impressive use of the laser technology that exemplifies its precision by laser etching the Queen’s crest into a bone sample. The video of her presentation can be found on the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies website.
