The Development Research Branch, in partnership with Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, hosted a unique Development Policy Seminar featuring the inaugural Ivy three-minute thesis competition in New York. Dubbed as IVY3MT2019, the event provided a platform to 14 PhD candidates from Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and Yale University to present their PhD dissertation ideas and key messages in 3 minutes, using only one slide. The candidates participating in the seminar were champions and runner ups in the three-minute thesis (3MT) competition in their respective institutions. The 3MT competition is motivated by the need to bridge the gap between cutting-edge academic research and the demand for new knowledge in the real world and make PhD candidates more marketable in the non-academic world. The presentations covered wide-ranging topics related to climate, health, physics and social science.

A panel of five judges—Mariangela Parra-Lancourt, Senior Economic Affairs Officer from UN DESA; Laurel Patterson, Team Leader of SDG Integration at UNDP; Salim Hasham, Partner at Mckinsey & Company; Alex Sarian, Director of Lincoln Center Education, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Mariët Westermann, Executive Vice President at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—presented Mehraveh Salehi, an Electrical Engineering PhD candidate at Yale, first place for her presentation on “Individualized and Task-Specific Functional Brain Mapping”. The second-place winner was Hannah Shoenhard, a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, for her presentation on “Linking Genes to Brain in Sensation and Decision-Making.” Bailey Brown, a Sociology candidate at Columbia, was the winner of the Audience Choice Award for her presentation on “Kinder Panic: School Selection and Parental Uncertainty”.

In his opening remarks, Elliott Harris, Assistant Secretary General and UN Chief Economist, welcomed the initiative, underscoring the need for innovative-thinking and greater collaboration for addressing multi-faceted sustainable development challenges. Hamid Rashid, Chief, Development Research Branch, moderated the seminar that attracted more than 200 attendees from the UN, permanent missions and participating academic institutions.