Atia Binte Amin from Mymensingh, Bangladesh, has recently been crowned as the winner of the 3MT (Three Minutes Thesis) Competition held in California, USA.
Although originally from Bangladesh, Atia participated in the competition on behalf of Canada, where she is currently a PhD student in human genetics at McGill University in Montreal. The university has praised Atia in the online edition of their newsletter as she is the first person from McGill University to win the competition.
In the 3MT competition, participants present their research topics within three minutes in a comprehensible way to the average person. Atia's topic was black fever. Atia has also become the first Bangladeshi to win this prestigious award.
Atia, for the competition, won the inter-university, regional, and national levels in Canada and subsequently became eligible for the international level. Atia has won a prize worth USD 2,000, equivalent to about Tk 2 lakh.
"This year, the competition was tough. It was a lot of pressure for me. However, I received the highest number of votes from the audience in the competition," said Atia to Prothom Alo.
Atia spent her childhood in Mymensingh, where she was a student at the Mymensingh Agricultural University high school and college. She later got into the Department of Microbiology at the University of Dhaka. She later moved to the United States to get her Master’s degree on scholarship.
Atia started her PhD at McGill University in 2019. She is also a recipient of the 'Vanier Scholarship,' which was bestowed on her due to her achievements in education, research, and cultural activities. She is one of the 50 people to receive the scholarship this year, the first female student from Bangladesh, and the second Bangladeshi overall to receive the scholarship.
Atia aced the final round of the 3MT competition by talking about the remedy and the medicines that should be developed to tackle black fever, as most of the existing medicines have lost their effectiveness against the disease. She also presented her own research. The disease is also mostly unknown to the people of Canada, which made Atia's feat even more impressive.
