Career Corner: Scientific Presentations

by Peter Dedon

One of the most important determinants of success in science is the communication of ideas and discoveries to various audiences. Every step up the career mountain depends on other people's perceptions of our work and our ability to communicate complicated concepts. Yet most graduate and postdoctoral programs do not provide systematic guidance on how to give good presentations. This inaugural Career Corner piece addresses this very issue.

Entire books have been written on this topic, so the limited space here allows me to highlight only the most important issues: organization, content, graphics, style, and comfort. The quality of your science is up to you, but I will provide suggestions on how to morph the proverbial sow's ear into a silk-purse presentation.

Organization and content. Organize your talk like a well-written paper: introduction, body, and conclusion. My own rule of thumb is to prepare one slide for each minute of allotted speaking time. Think in terms of outlines and flow charts for the entire talk, for each section of the talk, and for each slide. There should be an obvious logic to the flow of information, with a bulleted outline clearly showing the development of your ideas. The listener does not need to hear every precious thought or to see every experimental detail, so carefully choose the most important ideas, results, and words to "sell" your science. However, pitch the talk to a general audience by taking the time to explain methods and concepts clearly.

In a series of introductory slides, orient the listener to the field and provide context with a 30,000-foot view that progressively narrows to focus on your specific problem, taking care to emphasize the context and importance of your work. Develop the body of your talk with 3—5 integrated and progressive subgroups of slides moving, for example, from method development to method validation and, finally, to method application. Each slide or group of slides should communicate a single idea and should be organized along the same lines as the entire talk: introduce, develop, conclude. All in one minute.

End your talk with a bold and terse statement of the importance of your major conclusions: why are the results important and where do you go from here? Do not, under any circumstances, read a series of bulleted conclusion sentences. Instead, use a single paraphrased sentence to summarize each of your main points.

Graphics. This is such an obvious issue that little need be said about the importance of high-quality graphics. Fill the space of each slide or chalkboard, minimizing the "white space". Illustrate your slides liberally. You need not hire a professional illustrator if you spend time mastering four must-have tools: Excel, Powerpoint, Chemdraw, and Illustrator. The web has dramatically changed the way we can illustrate our talks with good graphics, but you absolutely must provide proper attribution to other people's graphics with a citation or permission-to-use request! Use at most one or two fonts on a slide and use a font size that can be easily read in the last row in the auditorium.

Style. The best talks make you want to see the next slide, so build tension by verbally connecting two slides or dropping a hint as to what is coming next. Title each slide with the conclusion or main point that you want to make, and state or write a summary sentence that also leads into the next slide. Never read the text on your slides! Never! Modulate the pitch and volume of your voice and speak louder than you normally would to avoid giving a droning or soporific talk. Transform from the shy and quiet person into the fascinating, enthusiastic and witty speaker. Develop good laser-pointer skills, since there is nothing more annoying than a hypercaffeinated red dot darting around the screen.

Comfort. Anyone who brags about not being anxious before a presentation is either lying or a poor speaker. Whether it's your first thesis committee meeting or your 199^th seminar, a dose of well-controlled anxiety and adrenaline can force you to focus on the task at hand: an informative and entertaining presentation. The only way to control the anxiety is to practice both mentally and physically. Really! Practice in front of a mirror to see how you look and really listen to your words, since they often sound much different than they read on paper. Always present it to an honest friend for feedback. It's better to suffer embarrassment in private with a friend than with a potential employer or a tough audience of competitors at a meeting. Early in your career, write a "script" for each slide in your talk, with the most important points, key words, and phrases that capture the message in the slide. Over time, your script will shorten and disappear altogether as your comfort level increases.

These are all very general approaches. Perhaps the most important things you can do to improve your presentation skills are to learn from experience and to practice. Give as many presentations as you can and ask for feedback. While listening to a seminar speaker, ask yourself why you are bored, nodding off, or fidgeting; or why you are awake, excited and eager to hear more. Incorporate these examples into your own talks to create your own unique presentation style. I wish you all good presentations!

Peter Dedon is Professor of Toxicology and Biological Engineering, Associate Head of the Department of Biological Engineering, and Deputy Director of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Sciences. Research in the Dedon Lab addresses the biological chemistry of inflammation, nucleic acid damage, RNA modifications, and, most recently, nucleic acid physiology in microbes.

Further reading:
The KU Medical Center On-Line Tutorial Series provides a very good collection of presentation and graphics tools, as well as books and articles.

Mark Hill's web site, "Oral Presentation Advice" has some very sage advice on public presentations skills, keeping in mind the field (computer science) and the date (1997; he mentions transparencies — the quaint tools of the previous generation of scientists).

With a spin toward business presentations, there are some good pointers on dealing with common problems at "Dealing with Presentation Disasters".

An excellent set of slides containing advice on presentations for non-native English speakers also has good advice for native speakers and is called "How to Prepare and Give Excellent Scientific Presentations Even in Your Second Language".