Congratulations to graduate student Morgan Nelson, who took first place in the University of Utah's 3 Minute Thesis Competition last summer. Morgan will be moving on to compete in the Western Association of Graduate Schools (WAGS) regional 3MT competition in March.
Morgan, a Utah native, earned her BS in Molecular Biology from BYU and worked as a genetic sequencing technologist at ARUP Laboratories before beginning the PhD program. She joined Ryan O’Connell’s lab, which focuses on miRNAs in the immune system; her own research is directed toward the cross-talk between metabolic programming and miRNA function in macrophages, with a disease focus on diet-induced obesity.
The 3MT competition is an international competition held at over 900 universities throughout the world. The first official 3MT competition was held in 2008 at the University of Queensland in Australia with 160 competitors, and its immediate popularity has led to spread over 85 countries with thousands of participants every year. The University of Utah held its first 3MT competition in 2013. Well done, Morgan!
