On April 11, 2024, four graduate students took home awards at The University of Texas at Austin's inaugural Empower Your Pitch competition. Three award winners are chosen by judges and receive $1,000 while the Community Choice Award winner is selected by the audience and receives $500. The four winners receive a funded trip to Washington, D.C. to celebrate and perform, and compete with winners from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University.
Empower Your Pitch Winners
Communication Studies Ph.D. student Sam James won the Outstanding Public Engagement Award with the presentation, "K-pop, Slime, & other Sticky Ideas: The Viscosity of Participatory Fan Culture."
Neuroscience Ph.D. student Brandy Routh won the Overall Excellence in Research Communication Award with the presentation, "Circadian Rhythms Shape the Growing Brain."
Nutritional Sciences Ph.D. student Mercy Sosanya won the Outstanding Creativity Award with the presentation, "Can the BabyThrive gaming app be a game changer for child nutrition in Nigeria?"
Sociology Ph.D. student Carly Young won the Community Choice Award for Excellence with the presentation, "Who Cares? Understanding the Impact of the Texas Abortion Ban."
This year's Empower Your Pitch consisted of 3 rounds of competition, with the first round including a dedicated panel of coaches to provide feedback to all contestants, helping to fine-tune pitches for subsequent rounds. After receiving and incorporating feedback, participants presented to Empower Your Pitch judges for a second time in the elimination round. Twelve standout participants were chosen in the second round as competition finalists, advancing to a thrilling final round and celebration.
The five finalist judges included Omar Abdullah, President of AchieveNEXT, Conor Cunningham, Austin Engineering Site Leader at Microsoft, Edward Latson, Chief Executive Officer at Opportunity Austin, Art Markman, Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin and Kelsey Spies Evans, Executive Director of Corporate Relations for University Development at The University of Texas at Austin.
In collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, “Empower Your Pitch” is an invigorating redesign of the 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) format. This engaging and dynamic competition and skill-development series is designed to equip participants with the strategies needed to effectively communicate complex ideas in just three minutes. Texas Career Engagement hosted several training opportunities, such as info sessions and workshops, to help students practice and refine their presentations before the competition began.
This campus-wide research communication competition is sponsored by The Graduate School, the Graduate Coordinators Network and Texas Career Engagement.