3MT pitch Yoni Schirris, AI for histopathological images: next step to personalised immunotherapy

3MT stand for "Three Minute Thesis". It is a pitch competition that was originally started by the University of Queensland, but has blossomed into an international competition with representatives of 900 universities from 85 countries all competing against each other. The pitches revolve around explaining PhD research to a lay audience in a video of no more than three minutes.

This year, for the first time, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) has decided to join the competition. In the past few months researchers from five different UvA faculties were given the opportunity to sign up. All candidates received training and coaching to try and produce the best video.

Each faculty held a pre-round during which an independent jury selected the three best pitches. For thirteen PhD candidates of the Faculty of Science movies were created. In the faculty competition three candidates were nominated for the UvA final. The nominees are: Grace Farmiloe (SILS), Yoni Schirris (IvI/NKI) and Susan Rigter (IoP/AMOLF).

On 7 September these nominated candidates from each faculty competed against each other in the UvA Final, judged by a jury. Yoni Schirris, PhD candidate of the Informatics institute and doing research at the Dutch Cancer Institute (NKI) was the overall winner of the UvA competition. Yoni explained how he uses artificial intelligence to improve cancer treatment. He will represent the UvA at the International 3MT finals (U21).