Congratulations to Rajasekhar Ganduri on winning the People’s Choice award at the UNT Toulouse Graduate School’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition for M.S. students on April 9, 2016! His prize for winning the award was $1,000. Rajasekhar is a student of Dr. Ram Dantu, CSE Professor and Director of the Center for Information and Computer Security. After several preliminary contests, ten finalists emerged to explain their thesis to a general audience in only three minutes. The finalists presented their thesis research methods, findings, and its significance in non-technical language.

Rajasekhar’s winning presentation was "Network Security by YOU." He describes his thesis, "In my research, a web tool is developed to simplify the process of configuring security systems by translating direct human language (like "Turn off internet to my home from 9 am - 6 pm") input into meaningful, working security rules. The network security tool built has shown promise to both experienced and inexperienced people in the network security field by simplifying the provisioning process to result in accurate and effective network security rules."

Two other CSE students also were in the final competition. Vandana Dhayal, Dr. Saraju Mohanty’s student, and Ashwini Tonge, Dr. Bill Buckle’s student, made their presentations in the Three Minute Competition. 3MT challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can be presented concisely to a non-specialist audience. The first 3MT competition was held in Australia at the University of Queensland in 2008. More than 200 universities worldwide now host competitions, including 40 in the U.S.