Omer Ali Won 3rd Place For The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition

The Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition requires research-based graduate students to present their research's impact and scope in a three-minute presentation. Launched in 2008 by The University of Queensland (UQ), 3MT competition honed students' presentation and communication skills.

Being a part of 3MT twice during my PhD at USM was an honour. My PhD supervisor, Dr. Mohamad Khairi Ishak, encouraged me to enter the 3MT competition in 2019. His dedication and kind support helped us win first place in the engineering category. This experience changed my life because it made me re-visit my PhD, its goals, and outcomes from a new perspective. Not only is it difficult and creative to condense hundreds of hours of work into three minutes, but it is also difficult. Nevertheless, it paid off brilliantly as I was honoured to represent USM at 3MT National level.

I was encouraged by my supervisor, Dr. Mohamad Khairi Ishak, and especially by Prof. Dr. Shahrel Azmin (Deputy Dean - Research, Innovation, and Industry-Community Engagement) to return in 2021 and present the next chapter in my research. This year's competition was tougher than ever, thanks to IPS, as 31 brilliant researchers presented their cutting-edge research.

I got to present some of my recent research findings on wireless sensor networks battery characterization and device lifetime enhancement. We developed lightweight adaptive machine learning algorithms to estimate battery capacity and further designed adaptive MAC layer protocols to extend the device lifetime of WSN nodes. Our proposed strategy not only accurately estimates battery capacity and device power consumption, but also extends battery life by over 21 days. This work will result in significant advancements in all WSN deployment scenarios, and we are grateful to IPS and especially the 3MT team for their support

Finally, I encourage all post-graduate students to participate in future 3MT competitions. "It's not just another presentation," I assure you. In all honesty, this sets the stage for the most important and challenging presentation of our professional career (the post-graduate viva-voce).

In summary, 3MT is about dedication, finesse, and control.

Thank you,

- Omer Ali.