Who says PhD students are boring?  Each year as part of the University of Tasmania’s Research Week a competition is run to cultivate PhD students’ academic, presentation, and research communication skills whilst also celebrating their exciting research.

Last Friday with the other 16 finalist, Mr Lokman Norazmi a PhD student at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies presented his three minute presentation "The beginning of a Trojan war against invasive alien fish” hoping to inform and entertain the audience.

The presentation outlined Lokman’s work which was part of a joint research program supported by the Inland Fisheries Service, University of Tasmania, NRM North and the Australian Research Council on how to eradicate Gambusia from Tasmania.

Inland Fisheries own Dr Jawahar Patil co-supervised the project along with Assoc Prof John Purser.

We are pleased to announce that while every student did an amazing job communicating their research, Lokman did a noticeably exceptional job and won both the University prize and the popular prize, as voted by the audience. Congratulations.

The awards come with a prize of research funding and an opportunity to represent the University of Tasmania at a Trans-Tasman competition to be held in Brisbane on 2 October.  We wish him well and hope he continues with his fight against the scourge Gambusia.