An innovative intervention to address myopia (short-sightedness) with visual noise was the research pitch that scored PhD student Michael Tran the top spot at the University of Canberra’s (UC) Three Minute Thesis (3MT) finals on Thursday night held in front of a full-house audience at the University’s Ann Harding Conference Centre.
3MT is an international annual research communication competition, which sees participants distil their (on average, 80,000-word) thesis into a concise three-minute pitch, to win funding towards their research.
Pursuing his PhD at UC’s Faculty of Health, Mr Tran’s research focuses on using an Augmented Reality (AR) headset to address myopia – and with a projected 50 per cent of the global population projected to suffer from the condition by 2050, the Canberra optometrist is hoping his intervention may help shrink that number.
Winning $4,000 for his research, Mr Tran was thrilled at taking top spot – but said his real takeaway from the night was getting to hear about some of the other innovative, impactful and community-centric research happening at UC.
“I know that might sound like a bit of a PR spiel, but it’s honestly how I feel!” he said. “UC is a small university, with so much great research going on and I’m just grateful to be a part of that.
“I’ve been on the research communications journey since I started my PhD in 2024 – making complicated topics tangible for an audience is really valuable, not just to build your own skillset, but also your collaborative networks, and expand your research.”
Nipuni Wijesinghe from the Faculty of Science and Technology won $2,000 as runner-up, engaging judges and audience alike with her pitch on how to improve human-robot interaction, when robots execute tasks without being able to read context clues as a human can.
“By 2025, it’s expected that one in 10 people will have regular interactions with robots, so getting this framework right now really matters,” she said.
“Making our research accessible to a general audience is so important – at the end of the day, research is about making people’s lives better and the knowledge should be shared with everyone. Plus, this accessibility allows people to build on our research.”
Bethany Canty from the Faculty of Health won the People’s Choice award – and $1,000 to go towards her work in the under-researched area of breast impact injuries in sport, as she evaluates a specially-designed novel wearable sensor system.
Mr Tran will now go on to compete in the Asia-Pacific Three Minute Thesis Semi-Finals, to be held as a virtual event on Wednesday 14 October.
Access all finalists’ pitches here: UC 3MT 2026 finalists.