KENNESAW, Ga. | Apr 12, 2024

By Tracy Gaudlip

 

On Thursday, April 4, 2024, the Graduate College held its 9th annual 3-Minute Thesis competition (3MT), tasking master’s and doctoral students with presenting their research to a non-specialist audience within a strict three-minute timeframe.

William Reed, a master’s in exercise science student, clinched the top spot with his presentation titled “Kinetic and Kinematic Effects of Unilateral Flag Carrying on Referee Sprinting and Agility Performance.” Yongshuai Wu, currently pursuing a master’s in information technology, secured both the Runner-Up position and the People’s Choice award for his presentation titled “Autonomous Robots for Inventory Tasks in Unstructured Environments via Zero-Shot Imitation Learning.”

Reed’s presentation centered on the differences between normal sprinting motions and that of “flag-carrying” soccer referees. From his own experience he explained, “We referees have a distinct lack of research around us in comparison to the players we officiate, so finding a way to add to that limited research base was the goal. Referees receive very little assistance when it comes to specialized training, so working to analyze the intricacies of our own performance expectations led us to this premise of running with only one moving arm, as the flag must be carried in the other.” He added that while there is some research on the effects of restricting both arms in track athletes, none have looked at the effects of running with only one arm moving.

In addition to the 1080Sprint machine, he used tests standardized by soccer governing bodies to determine what kind of change flag-carrying has on running. He tracked kinetic data for each test and compared the tests within individuals. 

Now that the competition is over, Reed said he “feels a sense of calm” and is looking forward to the next challenge. 

Wu’s research delves into robotic reasoning, which involves training robots to mimic human behavior. To evaluate their methods, he explained that they chose robot radio-frequency identification (RFID) because it’s a challenging task for robots. This technology uses radio waves to identify and track tags attached to objects and is used in applications such as inventory management.

“The concept of RFID inventory is that each product will have an RFID tag, which can be scanned by a reader within a short distance. This is why we need to train the robot to approach those places where the products are located.”

Wu explained that grasping robotic reasoning can be daunting for those unfamiliar with robotics. “Summarizing this into a 3-minute presentation is tough,” he said. He opted to focus on key milestones rather than narrate the entire journey, and it turned out to be effective.

Reed was awarded $1,000 for his first-place presentation, while Wu earned $750 for second place and an additional $350 for winning the people’s choice award.

Dr. Amy Buddie, the Director of Undergraduate Research, along with Dr. Karin Scarpinato, the Vice President of Research, and Dr. Jessica Rudd, an alumna of KSU’s Ph.D. program, and a past 3MT champion who currently serves as Senior Data Engineer and Technical Lead at Intuit Mailchimp, were the judges for the competition.
 

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2024 3-Minute Thesis (3MT) Participants

• Kimberly Green, Ed.D. in Teacher Leadership, Faculty advisor: Dr. Nicholas Clegorne, Perceptions of the Differing Prepatory Needs of Teacher Leaders and Educational Leaders

• Lacey Harper, Master of Science in Exercise Science, Faculty advisor: Dr. Garrett Hester, The Power of the Mind to Enhance Strength Training Adaptations in Older Women

• Anthoanette Kommeh, Ph.D. in International Conflict Management, Faculty advisor: Dr. Christopher Pallas, The Impact of NGO Sensitivity to Local Gender Dynamics on Project Outcomes and Social Relations in Northern Ghana

• Srivastsa Mallapragada, Ph.D. Analytics and Data Science, Faculty advisor: Dr. Ying Xie, Multi-Modality Transformer for E-Commerce: Inferring User Purchase Intention to Bridge the Query-Product Gap

• William Reed, Master of Science in Exercise Science, Faculty advisor: Dr. Jacob Grazer, Kinetic and Kinematic Effects of Unilateral Flag Carrying on Referee Sprinting and Agility Performance

• Kimberly Wang, Master of Science in Information Technology, Faculty advisor: Dr. Chloe Yixin Xie, How Tiny Interactions in GPR56 Control Your Health?

• Yongshuai Wu, Master of Science in Information Technology, Faculty advisor: Dr. Shaoen Wu, Autonomous Robots for Inventory Tasks in Unstructured Environments via Zero-Shot Imitation Learning