 Llywodraeth, everybody. Welcome to the Championship Round of this year's Three Minute Thesis at Carnegie Mellon University. I'm Keith Webster, the Helen and Henry Posner junior dean of University Libraries, and your host this evening. We're, just in case I forgot my name, thrilled to be back for our ninth year hosting this event. It's actually the tenth anniversary, but there was a pandemic that caught one of our years, and we continue o fod yn hwnnw i ddysgol i'r gymryd ydyn ni'n rhoi bod ni'n rhan fyddiolion ddau i gyfryd i ei rai'r rhan d aparwyr yn y bwrw i ddwydiol. Mae'n ysgrifell yno nid i fod sydd chi'n mynd i chi ddweud i Gymru'r Auditoriw sydd yn ni yw yw'n mynd roedd y bydden nhw'n rhan o'r cyffredinol yn si confessol, simply wedi eu gwneud gan y Cmgol LlamНu Aelwn. Mae'r team mewn gwahanol yw ydy hi'n cael ei piadau ac e'n gwybod i'r Ymwy, ond ydych chi'n gwybod i'r gwybod i'r gwybod a rydyn nhw'n mynd i'r rhywbeth sydd ymddangos yn cael piadau'r gwybod. Rwy'n gwybod i'n gweithio'n gwybodaeth gyda'r erbyn i gymryd gymryd yn cael ei gwybod i'r piadau, ac rydyn ni nad yw'n gwybod i'r gwybod i'r rai ac mae oedd yn rhanol. A'n ychydig ddigon... Thank you computer scientists for being here. The three-minute thesis competition was developed at my former university, the University of Queensland in Australia, and has grown from what we developed in 2008 as an interesting local event into an international competition held in universities around the world. The premise of three-minute thesis is quite simple. Our speakers have three minutes to present a compelling aeration on their thesis and its significance. It's not an exercise in trivialising or dumbing down, but challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can present them concisely to a non-specialist audience. In bringing the 3MT to Carnegie Mellon, I had no idea of the response, but over the nine years in which we've held the event, we've had over 588 participants from across the university, and we've had judges representing faculty and staff from colleges, schools, university libraries, members of university leadership, alumni and our wider community. 54 students participated in this year's preliminary rounds from all seven colleges, making this a truly campus-wide event. We have five of the colleges represented in tonight's finals. I'm grateful, as always, to those who are willing to help us by judging 3MT, and our finalist judges this year sitting in the front row are displayed on your screen, Mary Jo Diwley, vice-president and general counsel, Anne Malloy, trustee and member of the university libraries, Dean's Advocacy Council, Theresa Mayer, vice-president for research, Theresa Trumbetta, assistant vice-president for alumni and constituent engagement, and Marshal Ibert, university professor and dean of the School of Computer Science. The rules are straightforward. Speakers are limited to a maximum of three minutes. Competition rules require the disqualification of anyone who continues beyond their time. Speakers will view a countdown timer, and please, if you find that the timer goes, just stop talking. We don't want to disqualify anyone. They are allowed to use a single static PowerPoint slide, but no media props, singing, dancing, anything of that sort. Our judges will consider three broad criteria in arriving at their decision. Comprehension, engagement and communication. Once all of our speakers have completed their presentations, I will escort the judges to somewhere outside so they can deliberate. During that intermission, I'll come to that in a moment. So our judging panel will select three winners receiving awards as shown on the screen, in addition to the prizes they won in the preliminary rounds. In addition, the in-person audience will have an opportunity to vote for the People's Choice Award. You should already have a ballot paper, if not, we'll make sure you get one. We've gone for the low-tech hack-proof approach of single-paper voting. We are also happy to partner with the Alumni Association to award an Alumni Choice Award, and that prize will be awarded to the participant who receives the most votes from CMU alumni watching the livestream on the Alumni Association website. The winner of the Alumni Choice Award will be announced at the end of this evening's event, along with the other award winners. Before introducing our first presenter, I'd like to thank the many people who have made this event possible. As I've mentioned, our finalists have arrived from five heats, which together attracted 54 students. I'm grateful to all of the students from around the university who participated. Each heat had a panel of judges and I'm grateful to them and to the phenomenal work of my colleagues in the university libraries, especially Sonia Wellington, who has made tonight possible, and my colleagues Ryan Splendor, Sarah Young, Jimmy McKee, Shannon Riff, Sarah Bender, and Shannon Baldridge.