Research In Progress (RIP) Talks

In RIP sessions, we host postdocs, graduate students and undergraduate students who give talks on their current research. Most speakers are researchers from the field of Systems Biology, but we welcome speakers from any discipline with relevant applications.  

Speakers:

We aim to provide an open and welcoming environment for individuals to present their research in whatever stage they are at.

The primary goal of these sessions is to provide the speaker with feedback on whatever they are working on from an unpolished idea to prepublication. As such, we don’t dictate a structure. In the past, RIP speakers have used their sessions to:

• Practice for pre-advancement, advancement, and defense talks
• Practice for lab meeting presentations and conference talks
• Brainstorm for how to tackle a specific research problem
• Solicit feedback on the state and direction of their project

Audience:

We aim to foster an environment where audience members cordially engage with the talk and benefit from exposure to the variety of research.

For the best feedback and speaker-audience interactions the audience are encouraged to

• Arrive on time for RIP talks
• Ask questions in a respectful, judgement-free manner
• Allow others to ask questions

FAQ

Should my advisor be at my RIP talk?
No, your advisor should not be in attendance.

How long should my talk be?
Seminars are scheduled for an hour, but you can use that time however you’d like. If you are making a talk specifically for the seminar, we encourage at most a 40 minute talk to allow significant time for discussion. If you are practicing a talk for a another venue, we’ll ask you to let us know if you’d like us to interrupt you with questions or hold them until the end, in which case you can evaluate the time your talk takes.

Invited Speakers

When we invite speakers from other universities, we operate like a traditional seminar.

Speakers:

• Please limit your talk to 45 minutes to allow time for questions
• Expect a diverse audience from biology, physics, math, biomedical engineering, etc.

Speakers traditionally have a graduate student host in addition to the faculty member who invites them. Graduate student hosts are responsible for:

• Introducing the speaker
• Chairing the question session
• Organizing lunch with the speaker and other graduate students

Graduate student hosts should come prepared with an introduction (drawn from the speaker’s CV, personal knowledge which gives context to the subject of the talk, etc.) and questions to get the session going. We recommend the lunch party be between 3 and 5 graduate students. If the faculty host agrees, we encourage graduate student hosts to help with other responsibilities such as scheduling and walking the speaker to meetings.