Congratulations to CQUniversity PhD candidate Ria de Guzman (nee Reyes) who performed well to reach the semi-finals of UQ's Inaugural Australia & New Zealand Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in Brisbane.

Ria, who recently submitted her thesis on the stevia plant, is now employed as a food technologist by a food ingredients company in Melbourne.

Ria works on her PhD at Rockhampton Campus

She performed well against competitors from 32 other universities during the competition which challenges research higher degree (RHD) students to explain their research project to a non-specialist audience in just three minutes.

Associate Dean, Research & Innovation Professor Kerry Walsh accompanied Ria to the competition as her supervisor.

"Ria won our CQUniversity 3MT competition and attended the competition in Brisbane, competing for a first prize of $5000 against candidates from Australia, New Zealand and Fiji," Professor Walsh said.

"Candidates were assessed by a distinguished judging panel based on communication style for a lay audience, comprehension by the audience and engagement with the audience."

"Ria spoke well, and was as engaging and polished as any, with better graphics even, but I believe the finalists managed to convey more project content and a better sense of the steps involved."

Professor Walsh said UQ has a 90% participation rate in 3MT, with some areas making this a requirement of progress requirements, as a way of ensuring oral skills in RHD candidates.

Another image of Ria at work in Rockhampton

He said CQUniversity was likely to have another round for the 3MT competition during Research Week in April next week.

Ria is originally from The Philippines, which she once worked blending new mixes for Lipton Ice Tea as a food product developer for Unilever (after completing an honours degree in Chemistry and Computer Engineering at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines).

During her time at CQUniversity Rockhampton, she researched methods to ensure a promising and newly-approved natural sweetener called stevia can be as sweet as possible when it reaches the market.

Her work is important to ensure the viability of stevia as a crop for Australian farmers and to ensure it catches on with consumers, as it has potential benefits in the fight against obesity and diabetes.

Ria has been finding the best growing conditions for sweetness and also developing technology that can ensure the sweetness of particular crops in the farmshed before delivery to the market. She has used High Performance Liquid Chromatography and Near Infra-red Spectroscopy techniques for measuring leaf sweetness.