Hisham Abdelrahman, center, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences, accepts congratulations from India Napier, Graduate Student Council president, left, and Graduate School Dean George Flowers after finishing high in Auburn’s 2015 Three-Minute Thesis competition.
Hisham Abdelrahman, a Ph.D. candidate under the direction of veteran School of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Aquatic Sciences professor Claude Boyd, was the runner-up and also won the coveted People’s Choice Award during Auburn University’s Three-Minute Thesis, or 3MT, competition in November.
The competition, held each fall, is open to all doctoral students enrolled at Auburn University and challenges them to communicate their thesis research, its significance and their key findings to a non-specialist audience, in nontechnical and jargon-free language, in three minutes or less.
In his engaging presentation as one of the contest’s 10 finalists, Abdelrahman told the audience about his research on how variation in water temperatures influence the survival, growth and yield of Pacific white shrimp raised in inland, low-salinity water in Alabama and other states in the region.
When the judges’ totals were tallied, Abdelrahman fell one point shy of first place, but as both runner-up and People’s Choice winner, he was awarded cash prizes totaling $500.
Abdelrahman came to Auburn from his home country of Egypt in 2012 and earned a master’s in statistics and probability in 2014. In his doctoral studies, he has completed six research projects and expects to receive the Ph.D. in August 2016.
