The Final Competition of SANORD 3MT 2021 Takes Place in Norway – Last Year’s Winner Pablo Pérez Chaves One of the Hosts of the Event

03.09.2021

Last year's SANORD 3MT competition was won by Postdoctoral Researcher Pablo Pérez Chaves from the University of Turku with his research on Amazonia. This year, the competition will be held in Norway, where Pérez Chaves will be one of the hosts of the event.

Established in 2006, Southern African-Nordic Centre (SANORD) is a partnership network consisting of higher education institutions in Southern Africa and the Nordic countries. There are currently 42 members in SANORD, and the University of Turku is one of the founding members of the network. In 2020, SANORD organised its first 3MT competition for its member universities. 3MT is an academic competition developed by the Queensland University in Australia. In the competition, doctoral candidates compete by presenting their research topic and its significance within three minutes.

Last year, Pablo Pérez Chaves, who was working as a doctoral candidate at the University of Turku, won the SANORD 3MT competition with his Amazonia-themed presentation Mapping floristic patterns in Amazonia, which was based on his doctoral thesis from December 2020.

– In my research, I focus on mapping biodiversity patterns using satellite images and machine learning, which can be applied in different locations, not only Amazonia. This is useful for identifying suitable areas for sustainable management and conservation. Increasing scientific knowledge is not the only key factor, but also effectively communicating and mainstreaming the outputs in a simple manner to different stakeholders, says Pérez Chaves.

This year, the host organisations of the SANORD 3MT competition will be Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and the University of Bergen, and the competition will be held in Bergen, Norway on 8 September. 

SANORD 3MT will be part of the SANORD conference organised through remote connections in Bergen on 7–10 September 2021. You can participate the conference here.

Created 03.09.2021 | Updated 03.09.2021