Talk Guidelines
Research presentations will take place on Saturday, January 18th from 2-3pm. You will have a total of 13 minutes. We suggest 10 minutes for the presentation and 3 minutes for Q&A. Below are some general guidelines. These are not requirements, but here to help guide you if needed.
Tips for effective presentations
– You can think of your presentation as a story. Set the stage in the beginning, describe the “issue” or scientific problem that is being investigated, and then show how you’ve worked to solve this problem. In some sense you can be the “hero” of the story.
– Tune the number of slides to your allotted time. A good rule of thumb is to use at most 1 slide per minute. For a 10 minute presentation, this means you should have only 10 slides. If you have too many slides, people may not be able to follow along.
– Equations can be difficult for the audience to parse. You should consider showing only equations that are necessary to understand your work. – Avoid using paragraphs and long strings of text; phrases / short sentences are fine. Try to use bullet points when possible.
– Presentations are visual works. Try to use pictures/graphs/visuals to convey your point. An entire slide can be just a single picture of your experiment set up with some labels overlaid and that would be great! – Font sizes of text should at least be size 14, but bigger is definitely better (think 20, 24) Sample outline for a 10 minute Presentation (Optional)Slide 1: Title Slide – Title of presentation, your name, advisors/collaborators names, university logos Slide 2: Outline of the presentation / “Table of Contents” – gives audience an idea of what to expect – not a necessary slide, but can be helpful Slide 3-4: Background/Context/Big Picture – Set up your story. E.g. if you’re in a lab testing the strength of different forms of insulin injections for diabetes, this is where you’d describe what diabetes is, maybe how many people it affects, and what insulin is. Remember, the majority of your audience members are not in your field, so this is the time to get them situated and interested in your work. – At the very last bit of this portion, you can introduce more detail that motivates your specific project. (e.g. insulin injections are not effective because x and y…) Slide 5-6: Your project – Introduce your hypothesis, project set up, and methods. This includes actual experiment set up, any data sets / materials / methods that are unique to this work. Images work great here. Slide 7-8: Results / Expected Results – If you have results / conclusions, this is where you share them. In the form of graphs, pictures, etc. is best. – If you don’t yet have results, this is where you can show *expected* results, also in the form of a graph / picture. Slide 9: Next Steps – 2-3 immediate next steps (e.g. run this analysis, finish building this part of instrument) – 1-2 long term next steps that show you understand how your work fits into the larger conversation (e.g. compare the results of this work to that of this other field, develop simulations to test our theories and model our observations) Slide 10: Thank you + Acknowledgments – At the very least, you’ll want to thank: your faculty PI, grads in your lab, and any funding sources that helped you get to CUWiP@UCI. This land was once owned by the indigenous Tongva people – if it is important to you, you may want to acknowledge them for use of their lands.
Poster Guidelines
The poster session will take place on Saturday, January 18th from 3:25pm-4:45pm. We can accommodate posters of 48″ by 36″. Individual sheets that are assembled into posters will be acceptable. Details on how early you can hang your poster will be shared at a later date. Linked below are some general guidelines and resources to help you:
1. General guide that includes font sizes, and other specific recommendations: https://sites.psu.edu/astrowright/2013/09/17/make-award-winning-posters/
2. Do’s and Don’ts, with some creative ideas towards the end: https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/
3. Example posters with listed pros and cons of each: https://ugs.utexas.edu/our/poster/samples
4. A whole blog dedicated to making posters, with regular examples: http://betterposters.blogspot.com/
5. A very modern, minimalistic perspective that’s best if you have results from your research already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RwJbhkCA58