It took UC Irvine graduate student Ashley Fong years to make significant advances in her research using stem cells to repair damaged heart muscle, but just minutes — three to be exact — to wow a panel of judges with a succinct explanation of her work and capture the championship at the first UC-wide Grad Slam tournament.
Graduate students are rarely rewarded for being brief or simple, but those were the exact requirements to win Monday, as 10 UC scientists and scholars competed to deliver the most illuminating three-minute explanation of their work.
An elated Fong took home $6,000 in prize money and the glory of out-talking her peers — all of whom had won similar contests at their home campuses and provided some tough competition.
Coming in second and third place were Daniel Hieber of UC Santa Barbara and Alex Phan of UC San Diego, with talks on efforts to save a language from extinction and a device to help glaucoma patients.
Nathaniel Bogie, an environmental sciences student, represented UC Merced in the competition. A group of his graduate student peers gathered in the Grad Pad on Monday to watch the competition and cheer him on during his presentation on battling drought stress in crops in the African Sahel.
Photo: Nate Bogie at the UC Systemwide Grad Slam Event
Credit: Callale Concon
See the full story on the UC systemwide competiton from the UC Newsroom here, and more information about the UC Merced GradSLAM! competition here.
