Pitching an 80 thousand or so word doctoral thesis with a three minute spiel was all in a night’s work for Peta Zivec, who won Griffith’s annual Three Minute Thesis Final at South Bank.
The PhD candidate from Griffith Sciences, impressed the three person judging panel with her presentation – ‘Understanding pathways of revegetating abandoned farming lands in a changing climate’.
2019 3MT Final winner with judges (L-R) Phillip Stork, Dr Jens Tampe and Professor Sue Berners-Price
Peta showed confidence, passion and was able to articulate her research work into an engaging and accessible three minute summation.
“It was daunting to begin with but the wonderful support I had from Griffith Graduate Research School (GGRS) who helped me prepare and offer all the finalists guidance and expertise was unbelievably helpful,” Peta said
A Griffith Honours graduate, Peta is hoping to finish her thesis in eighteen months.
“The lessons from my PhD can be applied to agricultural and urban landscapes across the world and the challenges they face.
“It’s learning to love weeds. It’s learning to love this rambunctious garden that this anthropocene is creating and if we learn to see the value in exotics and natives pull together we can create a lot more sustainable habitat.
“I grew up on a farm so my love of the land has never left me”.
Peta will represent Griffith at the upcoming 3MT Asia-Pacific Final at the University of Queensland in early October
Lynn Nazareth from Griffith Health was runner up and also took out the People’s Choice Award for her presentation titled ‘Glia: The (unknown) Guardians of the Brain.
Griffith University would like to thank UniSuper for again sponsoring the 3MT final.
2019 3MT finalists (from back L-R) Christa van Aswegen, Bronte Alexander, David Schmidtke, Rachel Perkins, Connie Gan (Front l-R) Joanna Musik, Olivia Tan Hui, Siyao Gao, Lynn Nazareth (front) Peta Zivec
