 Okay, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name's Keith Webster. I'm Dean of University Libraries, and it's my great pleasure to welcome you to this year's Carnegie Mellon University Three-Minute Thesis Championship Finals. This year, we bring to you 11 contestants whose interests and expertise span the array of disciplines evident at this remarkable university. What's the keyboard already? The Three-Minute Thesis competition was developed by my former university, the University of Queensland in Australia, and has grown from what we in 2008 thought would be a one-off interesting local event into an international competition held in over 200 universities around the world. The premise of the event is simple. Our speakers have three minutes in which to present a compelling aeration on their thesis and its significance. It's not an exercise in trivializing or dumbing down research, but rather it challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can be presented concisely to a non-specialist audience. In bringing the event to Carnegie Mellon last year, I had no idea of the likely response, but over the past two years we've been stimulated and often entertained by more than 200 contestants representing every college in the university. Judges representing faculty from colleges, schools and libraries, university leaders and representatives of the research student body have selected the 11 finalists who will present today. I acknowledge their contribution to the Three-Minute Thesis competition and I also thank particularly Cindy Carroll and Erica Linky from my office and those of my faculty who are helping out today for providing wonderful support. We have five judges today and they are scattered around. I tried to get them to sit in a row, but it was like herding cats. The chair of the judging panel, Farnam Jahamian, our vice president for research and provost designate, Kristen Kerland, Susie Warrich McIntyre, Dan Martin and a particular welcome back to Dave Robinson, last year's winner who presented on Snake Robots. The rules are quite straightforward. Speakers are, as the competition title suggests, limited to 180 seconds and the rules require the disqualification of anyone who continues beyond that time. If they choose, and I think they all do choose that way, they will be able to view a three-minute countdown timer which Erica will be running from her computer in the front row. Speakers are permitted to use a single static PowerPoint slide but may not choose any other media or props. In arriving at their decision, our judges will consider three broad criteria, comprehension, engagement and communication. In just a moment, I'll introduce each speaker in turn and invite them to deliver their presentation. Once all the speakers have taken their turn, the judges will retire to agree on today's winners. Whilst the judges are conferring, the audience will have its turn. You should all have received when you came in a ballot paper on which you can mark your preferred speaker. We'll gather those and use the votes from the audience to announce the people's choice winner at the end along with the judges, first, second and third place choices.