Tenth Annual Three Minute Thesis Competition

The Trouble with Troubleshooting: Investigating Undergraduate Engineering Students' Difficulties with Troubleshooting​

Department: Engineering Education

Advisor: Dr. Andrew Olewnik

Biography: Chris, originally from Long Island, NY, is a skier, pianist, gamer and movie lover who has a wide range of interests. His research examines how and why undergraduate engineering students struggle with troubleshooting issues in technical systems. By studying the processes students use and the types of knowledge they draw upon, Chris works to identify the barriers that keep them from diagnosing and solving technical problems effectively. His goal is to understand the major challenges that students run into when trying to troubleshoot, to help them improve their performance on important learning activities and to improve the way we design problems that we give to students in engineering classes. After completing his degree, he hopes to become an engineering professor focused on teaching and instructional design.

Who Owns Teachers' Learning? Reimagining Teacher Professional Growth Through Co-Design

Department: Learning and Instruction

Advisor: Dr. Erin Kearney and Dr. Christopher Hoadley

Biography: A native of Fukushima, Japan, Yuya's research aims to develop and deliver a personalized teacher-training model built and co-designed with teachers. Over two months, he worked with three English language teachers at a Japanese secondary school to co-design learning activities, such as workshops and reflective journals. Motivated by offering an alternative approach that regards teachers as active collaborators and co-designers of their own professional learning and sustainable professional development that deepens participating teachers' pedagogical understanding and enhances classroom instruction. He enjoys watching a variety of sports including baseball, British Premier League soccer and American football. After completing his PhD, Yuya plans to pursue a faculty position in Japan, supporting both practicing and future teachers as they develop meaningful, sustainable ways to improve their instruction.

CounselorGPT: Understanding Users of Generative AI for Therapy

Department: Communication

Advisor: Dr. Melanie C. Green

Biography: Originally from Mount Sinai, NY, and now living in Hamburg, Gavin Raffloer studies Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how human beings interact with it in social and emotional ways. This research especially looks at how AI is used for the purposes of mental health and well-being and what drives people to do so. As a practicing therapist, Gavin wants to find a way to make the world a better place. Outside research and therapy, Gavin is a longtime dungeon master for Dungeons and Dragons (DnD) and has been running a campaign with friends for over five years. Gavin even proposed to his wife through DnD. His long-term goals is to either become a full professor studying AI and mental health or join a leading AI company.

Pausing by Tangling: How RNA Knots Tell Genes to Stop and Go

Department: Biological Sciences

Advisor: Dr. Eric. J. Strobel

Biography: Chathura, originally from Colombo, Sri Lanka, brings motivation to his research to help us address diseases caused by faulty RNA structures or design antibiotics against RNA structures of certain pathogens. His research investigates how RNA structures pause RNA polymerase which in turn alters the transcription elongation rate during gene expression. To address this, he is developing a tool that can simultaneously measure the activity of many thousands of RNA structures so that we will obtain a more in-depth and predictive understanding about pausing events (Pausing by RNA structures is a poorly elucidated gene regulatory mechanism). Chathura also once voiced an international noodle commercial, something no one believe was actually him, and loves traveling so much that he once took six trips in a single semester. His long-term goal is to pursue academia for teaching and research.