Geosciences Grad Student Mudith Weerabaddanage Places 3rd in Annual Grad Slam

Every year the Grad Center here at the University of Arizona Graduate College hosts Grad Slam. This campus-wide competition aims to celebrate graduate student research and creative works in accessible 3-minute talks. It’s a great opportunity for grad students to polish up their communication skills and “an effective way to showcase the innovative research and creative work associated with graduate education at the University of Arizona”. (gradcenter.arizona.edu)

Geosciences graduate students have had great success in past years at grad slam with last year’s first place winner being PhD graduate student Sankha Subhra Mahanti. This year, we’re happy to share that PhD graduate student Mudith Weerabaddanage placed 3rd overall with an eye opening presentation on the importance of freshwater to the people living on tropical Pacific islands. 

Here’s what Mudith had to say when asked about this exciting experience.

"Giving a 3-minute presentation on my research was quite challenging. It was even harder to deliver it to a general audience. But I think I did it well. Grad Slam 2025 was a great stage to showcase my research at the Department of Geosciences here at UofA. It was a great opportunity to polish my presentation and public speaking skills. My 3-minute presentation was titled ‘Reading Corals: Unraveling the Mysteries of Ocean History’. It was based on my PhD dissertation in which I reconstructed past hydroclimate changes in the western tropical Pacific using geochemistry in 'fossil corals'. Here I elaborated on how important freshwater is to the people living on tropical Pacific islands, and how important is my work for them to prepare for the future. I explained how massive corals are sampled, analyzed, and interpreted to find what had happened in the undocumented past. I ended my talk with a note of urgency to act now to mitigate climate change consequences that we all might face in the future. I am proud of my achievement and thankful for the opportunity given by the graduate center of the U of A".

Congrats Mudith