Kuo Lab Wiki

User Tools

Site Tools

You are here: start » tutorials » scientific_presentation
tutorials:scientific_presentation

This is an old revision of the document!

Table of Contents

Scientific Presentations

  • Guidelines for scientific presentations that Chih-Horng Kuo (chk@gate.sinica.edu.tw) developed for our group members. Suggestions are welcome.
  • Related information:

General

  • Presenting your work, either through oral or poster presentations, provides excellent opportunities for you to think about your work critically, to examine the logic, to establish the context and a story line, and to prepare for writing. Also, such opportunities allow others to know your work and to provide feedback.
  • Lots (and lots) of preparation and practice are required to do this well. Do not get frustrated if you feel like you did not do well. Just note the points that you can improve the next time, and use that knowledge and experience to improve.

Critical questions

Why?

  • Why are you doing this presentation?
    • To tell the world what you have done
    • To solicit feedback
    • To compete for an award
    • To get a job

Who?

  • Who are your audience?
    • Homogeneous or heterogeneous?
    • Background?
    • How to make them interested?
    • How to make them understand?

Examples

  • Progress report in the lab
    • Introduction can be brief
    • Need to explain detailed information regarding the Materials and Methods
    • Need to show the raw data in Results
    • Discussion focuses more on solving problems and have actionable future plans with clearly defined check points
  • Poster presentation at a conference
    • What kind of conference? Broadly defined fields or more focused?
    • How many people (and who) are attending?
    • Among the potential viewers of your poster, who do you care about the most? All the same, get as many people interested as possible? Already thinking about applying for graduate program or postdoc, and the potential future advisors will be there?
  • Oral presentation for travel grant competition
    • Who are the judges? What are their background? Is the breadth of your Introduction/Discussion appropriate?

Preparation

  • The “hourglass” principle in terms of the breadth
    • Start from something broad enough for all target audience at the start of Introduction, then zoom in to focus on your key question at the end of Introduction.
    • The Methods and Results sessions can be more focused on your field of study.
    • For Discussion, provide a “big picture” as the context to highlight the importance and implication of the key findings. End by linking back to the start of Introduction. Did you deliver what you promised?
  • Do you truly understand all the information that you put in the slides or posters?
  • Design: aim for a clear and simple style
    • True for oral and poster
    • Your goal is to communicate clearly. Designs that emphasize more on personal styles or eye-catching effects are fine as long as those do not interfere with the main goal
    • Are the text/figures/tables easy to read?
      • Common mistakes: the text of figure legend or axis labels are difficult to read

Oral presentations

  • Number of slides: plan to use one slide per minute as a general guideline.
    • Get familiar with the pace, this also helps with time control.
    • For short talks (~10 minutes), the number of slides may be slightly higher
    • Vary the information density. Do not pack every slide with a lot of information.
  • Think like a movie director
    • How many minutes and how many slides do you have? Are the proportions for different parts (e.g., Introduction, Main Findings, Discussion) appropriate?
    • Use a storyboard. Can be something very simple like hand sketch. Having a good idea about what you want to present before you actually work in front of computer can save a lot of time.
  • The “Outline” slide: mostly unnecessary, particularly for short presentations (< 30 minutes)
  • The “Acknowledgement” slide
    • Can be the second slide (immediately after the title slide) or the last slide
    • Common mistake: end with a slide with “Thank You!”. This is not useful at all. At the end of the presentation, while waiting for questions, keep the “Conclusions” slides on the screen. This helps to audience to remember the main points.
  • On stage: engage with your audience!
    • Be confident, and show the confidence to your audience
    • Show enthusiasm! If even the speaker appears to be bored, how can you expect the audience to become interested?
    • Face the audience, keep eye contact
    • Voice: change the speed, tone, and volume according to the content. For example: slow down for the important or complex part, louder for the exciting part.
    • If no microphone is available, make sure to project your voice to the entire room
    • Be careful with the pointer. Use the pointer to help the audience, not to distract them.
  • Q&A
    • If the questions are unclear, it is okay to ask people to repeat or ask in another way. Make sure that you truly understand the question before answering.
    • If you cannot answer, be frank about it. However, if possible, provide some reasonable discussion.
    • Be concise, but not overly so.

Poster presentations

  • Double-check the dimension guidelines!
  • Can people understand the key points by browsing without your presence?
  • Prepare a short (~1-3 minutes) and a long (~5-7 minutes) version of oral presentation based on the poster
tutorials/scientific_presentation.1692588593.txt.gz · Last modified: 2023/08/21 11:29 by chkuo