Student Pitch Competition Winners Announced!

On Tuesday, October 28, 2025, The Office for URaCE and the UTC Graduate School hosted the Graduate Student Three Minute Thesis Pitch and Undergraduate Student Research Elevator Pitch Competitions at McKenzie Arena. Thank you to all of the competitors, judges, and UTC personnel who made the event a success, and a huge congratulations to the winners!

Graduate Student Three Minute Thesis Competition Winners

	Name	Pitch Title	Mentor	Department
1st place	Maheshi G. Walawwe	Invasive Species Management	Dr. Lakmali Weerasena	Computational Science
2nd place	Ali Abuelgasim	Adaptive Insole Design to Prevent Foot Ulcers in Diabetic Neuropathy Patients	Dr. Erkan Kaplanoglu	Engineering Management & Technology
3rd place	Hannah Daugherty	Decoding Belief: Neural Mechanisms of Conspiracy Message Evaluation	Dr. Ricardo Wilhelm	Psychology

Undergraduate Student Research Elevator Pitch Competition Winners

	Name	Pitch Title	Mentor	Department
1st place	Noah Wyatt	A Low-Cost Portable Cosmic Ray Detector for Exploration and Education	Dr. Josh Hamblen	Physics
2nd place	Waltkia Clay	When Silence Speaks The Loudest: Safety Tap	Hannah Hartman	Social, Cultural, & Justice Studies
3rd place	Joshua Kilgore	Automatic and Controlled Processes in the Pathway from Drug Abuse to Addiction: E-Cigarettes	Dr. Michael Overton	Psychology