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Melis Cakar Wins First Place in UCLA’s Grad Slam!

This is an image of graduate student Melis Cakar, holding a bouquet of flowers in front of a large blue sign for the 2024 UCLA Grand Slam.

View Melis’ Full Winning Performance:

 

What is UCLA Grad Slam?

Grad Slam is a campus-wide and University of California system-wide competition designed to spotlight outstanding graduate student research through compelling, three-minute presentations. Often described as “TED Talks on steroids,” the event challenges students to clearly and effectively communicate the significance of their work to a non-specialist audience— an essential skill for academic, professional, and public engagement.
 
The 2024 competition began with a preliminary round of video submissions, followed by in-person semifinal rounds held on Tuesday, March 5, at the UCLA Kerckhoff Grand Salon. The event culminated in a live-streamed final competition and celebratory reception on Tuesday, April 2, at the UCLA Meyer and Renee Luskin Conference Center. Leading up to the competition, students honed their presentation skills through a series of preparatory workshops. 
 
UCLA awarded graduate student support prizes of $5,000, $3,000, and $2,000 to the first-, second-, and third-place winners, respectively, along with a $1,000 Audience Choice Award. The campus champion will go on to represent UCLA at the UC-wide Grad Slam final in San Francisco in May 2024, competing against winners from the nine other UC campuses.

 

SCAN Lab’s Graduate Student Wins First Place at 2024 Grad Slam

We are proud to share that Melis Çakar, a Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience and member of the SCAN Lab, earned first place in the 2024 UCLA Grad Slam competition with her compelling presentation, “Cerebellum: From (Un)Fashionable to Pivotal Science.” Her win highlights both her exceptional communication skills and the growing importance of cerebellar research in neuroscience and the role it plays in Autism research.

As the UCLA campus champion, Melis received a $5,000 award and will represent UCLA at the UC-wide Grad Slam Final in San Francisco this May, where she will compete against winners from the other nine University of California campuses.

Please join us in congratulating Melis on this outstanding achievement! We are incredibly proud of the hard work that she has put in and her success.

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