Visualise Your Thesis ™

History

Find out more about the origin and development of the Visualise Your Thesis competition.

• 2019

  2019 saw our first true International competition, when 16 institutions from 4 countries ran a local competition and sent their winner to the International final. The field was judged by a three judge panel and announced at eResearch Australasia in Brisbane on October 22nd 2019 by Professor Ginny Barbour. Read more about the 2019 International Judges.

  All winning entries are showcased on our figshare site, provided with the support of Digital Science, where they can be reused in accordance with a creative commons licence of the entrants choosing.  The site also provides detailed viewing metrics so that students can learn more about the reach of their presentations.

  The 2019 international prize pool totalled $8,000 AUD. Our inaugural winners were:

  • 1st  prize  - Annaclaire McDonald, University of Technology Sydney ($5,000 AU) Fantastic Metals & Where to Phyt Them
  • 2nd  prize  - Donovan Garcia-Ceron, La Trobe University ($2,000 AUD) Exploring Extracellular Vesicles From Plant Fungal Pathogens
  • 3rd prize -  Carmen Glanville, University of Melbourne ($1,000 AUD) Protecting Pets by Changing People

  The team presented at THETA 2019 in Wollongong on the benefits of Visualise Your Thesis for students and research administrators, and at eResearch Australasia in Brisbane on creating digital stories for impact in research.

  The 2019 judges were:

  • 
    Professor Ginny Barbour

    Director

    Australasian Open Access Strategy Group (AOASG) and Professor at Queensland University of Technology

  • 
    Assoc. Professor Tim Sherratt

    Digital Heritage

    Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra.

  • 
    Sam Muirhead

    Open source activist, animator and technologist, 2018/19 Mozilla Fellow.

• 2018

  After a relatively short history the competition was offered nationally so that other institutions could get involved, however was almost immediately forced to go international such was the demand from universities around the world. Each participating university send their local winning entry to be showcased in the non-competitive online winners' gallery hosted by the University of Melbourne.

  Institutions received a competition kit and resources to run their local competitions with the support of the University of Melbourne Visualise Your Thesis team, and the feedback from the early adopters was used to refine the competition processes for the future.

  

  The team presented at the Australian Research Management Society conference in Hobart, speaking about the development of the competition to date.

• 2017

  In August 2017, the competition became Pitch Your Thesis and, as an indication of how far the competition had come in its short history, judge Simon Clews was joined by academic celebrity, Associate Professor Inger Mewburn (known to all as the Thesis Whisperer). First prize that year was awarded to "Mathematics and assessment in early childhood education" by Rachel Pollitt, second prize to "A seasonal thermal energy storage system for space heating" by Sheikh Khaleduzzaman Shah, and third prize to "Designing animal-computer interaction to shape zoo visitors' perceptions of animals" by Sarah Webber. The popular Viewer's Choice prize went to "Saving life with new artificial blood vessels" by Fatemeh Karimi.

  

• 2016

  In August 2016 the competition put down its digital roots and became an ePoster competition called Visualise My Thesis. Still Melbourne-only in these early days, the competition challenged PhDs to effectively communicate complex research to a general audience. First prize was awarded to "Imagination of adventure in today's art" by Emilie Walsh, second prize went to "Development of the Rowley Shoals Reefs" by Jackson McCaffrey and third prize to "Weak feet and walking, it’s in the shoes" by Rachel Kennedy. That year also saw a new prize, the Viewers' Choice prize, which also went to Emilie Walsh. The 2016 competition was judged by Simon Clews (Director of the Melbourne Engagement Lab).

  

• 2015

  2015 saw the precursor to the Visualise Your Thesis competition, the Researcher @Library Week Poster competition. Part of the University of Melbourne's inaugural Researcher @Library Week, the competition was won by Matthew Wood, a PhD Candidate researching Tectonic Geomorphology. Second prize was awarded to Marcella Purnama, a Publishing and Communications Master's student, and third prize to Vincent Bachtiar, who was undertaking a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. The competition was successful and extremely popular, but there was clearly a demand for the poster to do more - to be more engaging, and even dramatic. An ePoster competition was almost inevitable.