Clear scientific presentations
Regardless if you're presenting to a Ph.D. committee or directly to one professor
Today I am focusing on the clarity of your slides. Simple, immediately applicable tips.
Bonus tip at the bottom of the email.
To whichever lab you apply, they will likely need you to present your previous work.
You need to be able to present your data clearly.
If you confuse them, you will not look smart.
If your presentation:
is unclear
is unorganized
doesn’t have a story
tries to falsely glorify results
It can and will cost you that position, you will not get it.
Today I am focusing on the clarity of your slides.
Some tips to make your presentation easier to follow:
1. Add the numbers to the slides.
The problem you’re solving: your audience might want to ask questions afterward. This makes it easy for them to make a note of what slide they want you to go back to.
It’s much easier to say “Go back to slide 7” than “Go back to that slide where you were talking about that neuron metabolism pathway…. no, not that one, the other one with a picture of a neuron… no the other picture of a neuron.”
2. Explain the data before you show it.
The problem you’re solving: the moment you show a graph on your slide, your audience will immediately start analyzing what the hell is going on on that graph. You can’t stop this. This means they will either stop listening to you to focus on the graph, or not be able to focus on the graph because they are focusing on you. You’re risking them not completely understanding your message if you don’t resolve this problem.
Before you show the whole graph, explain the background of the experiment in 2-3 three sentences.
For example: “We wanted to know how strong of a stress reaction our mice would show when treated with X drug and to do this we used cortisol rise over 24h as our proxy measurement for stress, and the result we got was surprising. We expected a slow rise over 24 hours in cortisol levels, but this is what we saw…” - NOW show the graph.
Now your audience is already anticipating the graph and has had enough time to ponder the result and at the same time understand this piece of data is important and what to focus on, instantly.
You never want them confused.
3. If your graph is complicated, introduce it gradually
The problem you’re solving: rarely will a person be able to immediately understand the entire graph with many different groups on it and multiple treatments over different periods.
You should not risk overwhelming them, OR even worse: looking like you're explaining your graph too fast to hide any weird things going on on it.
To avoid this, introduce the graph gradually and have control over what they are looking at.
Cover some parts of the graph in white so you can explain, for example, the controls and the axes first. Then you click, and the next part of the graph (for example your treatment groups) shows.
In one of my MSc. thesis graphs, I had to do this 4 times. Explain one part of the graph. Uncover the next part. Explain that. Uncover the next one. And so on.
But- at least my audience completely understood the damn thing by the time I was finished and there was nothing left unexplained.
Bonus tip:
This one is about your slide organization.
But more about your story organization.
In your data, you will have some interesting results, and most of them will probably not be so interesting. Challenge yourself to finish your presentation with the strongest piece of data. It might feel like it doesn’t belong there naturally, but I dare you. Reorganize your data so that the most interesting stuff comes last.
When I did this with my presentation (and I did my MSc presentation to about 50 different people) I started seeing some excited faces when the questions started.
Many more tips about presentations in future newsletters, but I don’t want to overwhelm you immediately.
Talk soon,
Kenan
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