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The Development Research Branch, in partnership with Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, hosted a unique Development Policy Seminar featuring the inaugural Ivy three-minute thesis competition in New York. Dubbed as , the event provided a platform to 14 PhD candidates from , , , , and to present their PhD dissertation ideas and key messages in 3 minutes, using only one slide. The candidates participating in the seminar were champions and runner ups in the three-minute thesis (3MT) competition in their respective institutions. The 3MT competition is motivated by the need to bridge the gap between cutting-edge academic research and the demand for new knowledge in the real world and make PhD candidates more marketable in the non-academic world. The presentations covered wide-ranging topics related to climate, health, physics and social science.

A panel of five judges鈥擬ariangela Parra-Lancourt, Senior Economic Affairs Officer from UN DESA; Laurel Patterson, Team Leader of SDG Integration at UNDP; Salim Hasham, Partner at Mckinsey & Company; Alex Sarian, Director of Lincoln Center Education, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts; and Mari毛t Westermann, Executive Vice President at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation鈥攑resented Mehraveh Salehi, an Electrical Engineering PhD candidate at Yale, first place for her presentation on 鈥淚ndividualized and Task-Specific Functional Brain Mapping鈥�. The second-place winner was Hannah Shoenhard, a Neuroscience PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, for her presentation on 鈥淟inking Genes to Brain in Sensation and Decision-Making.鈥� Bailey Brown, a Sociology candidate at Columbia, was the winner of the Audience Choice Award for her presentation on 鈥淜inder Panic: School Selection and Parental Uncertainty鈥�.

In his opening remarks, Elliott Harris, Assistant Secretary General and UN Chief Economist, welcomed the initiative, underscoring the need for innovative-thinking and greater collaboration for addressing multi-faceted sustainable development challenges. Hamid Rashid, Chief, Development Research Branch, moderated the seminar that attracted more than 200 attendees from the UN, permanent missions and participating academic institutions.