My thesis in 180 seconds: show your support to Maël Chamming's in the regional final

On Tuesday 7 April, 14 PhD students from schools and universities across the Pays de la Loire region will take to the stage live at the Stereolux in Nantes for the regional final of the ‘My Thesis in 180 Seconds’ competition.
Each will have exactly three minutes, and just one goal: to explain their research topic to you. Whether through teaching, humour, popularisation, passion or poetry, anything goes.

The ‘My thesis in 180 seconds’ (MT180) competition gives PhD students the opportunity to present their research topic in simple terms, in three minutes, to a diverse audience. The aim of this science outreach challenge is to make science accessible to everyone, while highlighting the work of young researchers.

Maël Chamming's (Research Institute in Civil and Mechanical Engineering and Laboratory of Digital Sciences of Nantes),  a PhD student at Centrale Nantes, has been selected for the regional final of the ‘My Thesis in 180 Seconds’ competition.
Once again, he will have 180 seconds to impress and hope to secure the one and only place in the national final.
Maël Chamming’s thesis focuses on the development of a decision-support tool for low-tech building design and is co-supervised by Emmanuel Rozière (GeM) and Émilie Poirson (LS2N).

3 questions for Maël Chamming's

How did the auditions in Nantes go?

We met up with the other candidates at the university theatre to deliver our pitch to a panel. The atmosphere was great; there was a real sense of camaraderie among us, and we were disappointed that not everyone could make it through!

How do you prepare for something like this?

We started preparing back in November, when we wrote the first draft of our script. A journalist gave us advice on phrasing, length and the world we were creating, and a professional actor helped us with staging, posture and the intonation we needed to use in front of an audience. In total, we had about twenty hours of training!

Ready for the regional final?

Yes, I’m ready; I can’t wait to get there and see the performances of the other contestants I’ll be meeting there! Whereas in the first round I didn’t know anyone in the audience, so if I’d messed up it wouldn’t have been noticed, for the regional final I’ve told people… There’s my support team and friends coming to see me, not to mention those who’ll be watching the live stream on YouTube. So I’d say what I’m most nervous about is that people I know are coming to see me.

Pratical information

The regional final will be held on Tuesday 7 April 2026 ah the Stéréolux in Nantes, at 7:30pm.

• Tickets for the event
• Watch live. You can vote for your favourite candidate by phone.

Event organisers

This regional final is organised by the Pays de la Loire Doctoral College, Nantes University, the CNRS and France Universités, in partnership with CASDEN Banque Populaire, with the support of SUN - Le Son Unique as part of MT180.