The provincial competition, an adaptation of the worldwide “3-Minute Thesis” competition, was held May 7 at the Palais des congrès de Montréal, as part of the ACFAS (Association francophone pour le savoir, or francophone association for knowledge) conference.

To choose the Polytechnique representatives, an internal competition was held on April 18, attended by 75 people. With Thomas Gervais as the emcee, 10 graduate-level participants tried their luck in presenting their research topics in simple terms to a diverse audience of laypersons. Viviane Lalande and Jérôme Poulin carried off the challenge with great success. Other competition participants included El-Mustapha Jaouar, Étienne Bernier, Lama Séoud, Benoît Cardin St-Antoine, Nedialko Krouchev, Dominique Claveau-Mallet, Alejandro Romero and Richard Gilles Engoulou.

To choose the winners, a diverse, highly qualified jury was selected. It included:

• Dominique Chassée, Written and Oral Communications course co-ordinator from Polytechnique;
• Binh An Vu Van, science reporter on Télé-Québec's show Le Code Chastenay;
• Raymond Lemieux, Editor-in-Chief of Québec Science magazine;
• Marc Laforest, adjunct professor, Department of Mathematics and Industrial Engineering at Polytechnique; and
• Yves Comeau, professor in the Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering at Polytechnique.

The jury members would like to congratulate all the participants, as they delivered top-quality performances. The competition was intense and the judges had to deliberate for a long time to choose the two winners. Viviane Lalande also won a public's choice award.

 
Jérôme Poulin and Viviane Lalande

Our two winners went up against the finalists from all the universities on May 7. Members of the Polytechnique community attended to support their representatives.

Congratulations to Jérôme and Viviane!