Queen’s University’s Anastasia Shavrova has advanced to the national final of the Three Minute Thesis after placing third at the provincial competition on Thursday, April 14 in Waterloo.

The master’s student in biology, who claimed the Queen’s crown with her presentation on the mating behaviour of fruit flies, was among the 20 graduate participants from universities across Ontario who took the stage at Wilfrid Laurier University

Taking the provincial title was Gah-Jone Won, an optometry PhD candidate from the University of Waterloo.

The 3MT is a communications competition for graduate students. Developed in Australia by the University of Queensland in 2008, the 3MT challenges students to explain their research in plain language in just three minutes.

The top five presenters from the Ontario final now move on to the national level, an online competition coordinated by the Canadian Association of Graduate Studies. The national final includes a People’s Choice category that is conducted through an online vote. Queen’s University’s Chenman (Cara) Yin was the 2015 winner of the category.