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Principles of Research Presentation

To convey information and request feedback, you need to give presentations. Duration can vary from 1 minute (elevator pitch) to two hours (a lecture). Here are some principles that you should keep in mind and practice.

Be aware of your purpose

Why are you going to give a presentation?

  1. 1-minute introduction about what you did.
  2. 1-minute introduction about what you are doing now.
  3. 5-minute update of your current progress (w/ or w/o slides).
  4. 15-minute conference talk (w/ slides).
  5. 45-minute invited talk (w/ slides).
  6. 45-minute job talk (w/ slides).
  7. 90-minute lecture (w/ slides).

Be aware of your audience

Who are you going to give the presentation to?

  1. Your supervisor.
  2. People who join your group meeting.
  3. People who have a similar background.
  4. People outside of your committee.

Prepare your presentation

  1. Write down the speech text.
  2. Make slides.
  3. Practice.
  4. Dry run, answer questions, and take feedback.
  5. Perform.

Make slides

  1. Susan McConnell (Stanford): Designing effective scientific presentations
    • We are good listeners and let's transfer the knowledge to make slides
  2. Consider the attention curve
    • https://ethos3.com/hacking-the-audience-attention-curve/
    • Split the talk into parts and summary the key message for each part
    • Write down the key messages first and fill up the rest of space
    • Highlight the key messages with both text and the soundtrack
  3. A simple style
    • One font (Calibri)
    • Large font size (24, 28, 36, 52) and less text
    • Sentence in one line
    • Built-in list
    • Box for the key summary
    • Backup slides
  4. Animation
    • Too much text and show them one by one

Practice

  • Slide by slide: starting from the last sentence for the last slide
  • All slides: control speed and try to remember as much as possible

Dry-run, answer questions, and take feedback

  1. Have eye contact, be confident
  2. That's good/interesting question. Give a high level overview of your answer in the beginning and then give the remaining details of your answer.