how to start a scientific presentation speech

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• CAREER GUIDE
• 19 December 2018

How to give a great scientific talk

• Nic Fleming 0

Nic Fleming is a freelance science writer based in Bristol, United Kingdom.

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Credit: Haykirdi/Getty Images

“It was horrific,” says Eileen Courtney. “I was just a bundle of nerves. I wasn’t able to eat for the whole of the previous day. That’s when I realized I needed to get over my fear of public speaking.”

Courtney is a third year PhD candidate studying interactions between metals and two-dimensional semiconducting materials at the University of Limerick, in the Republic of Ireland. Her moment of revelation came as she contemplated presenting her research at the Microscience Microscopy Congress in Manchester, United Kingdom, in July 2017.

The gut-punch feeling of dread that the prospect of being on stage can trigger will be familiar to many early-career scientists. It could be induced by an invitation to an international conference, an academic group meeting or a public engagement event. Or it might be caused by an all-important presentation as part of an interview process.

Although the audiences and goals of a talk may differ, the skills and techniques required to pull it off are similar. So what differentiates a good presentation from a bad one? How can you up your game in front of the lectern? And is being able to impress an audience really all that important?

The answer to that last question is an emphatic yes, says Susan McConnell, a neurobiologist at Stanford University, in California, who has been giving talks on giving talks for more than a decade. “The whole point of doing science is to be able to communicate it to others,” says McConnell. “Whether it is to our close colleagues, other scientists with a general interest in our area or to non-scientists, clarity of communication is essential.”

Engage like a champ

Great public speaking skills are not sufficient for good presenting, but they help. In August, Ramona J. Smith, a high-school teacher from Houston, Texas, was crowned Toastmasters 2018 World Champion of Public Speaking.

These are her top 10 tips, which she plans to outline in more detail in a forthcoming e-book.

1 Be yourself:  people relate to and connect with authenticity.

2 Prepare, practice and perfect: get rid of those crutch words, like ‘um’ and ‘you know’.

3 Describe what you’re telling us: use vivid words to help the audience paint a picture.

4 Vocal variety: change up your tone, volume and pitch to keep the audience engaged.

5 Study the greats:  watch what really great speakers do.

6 Get feedback:  a practice audience can help you get the bugs out.

7 Appearance: if you look good, you’ll feel good, which will help you give a great speech.

8 Pauses: they give the audience time to think, and help them engage.

9 Body language:  use gestures and make use of the space to help deliver your message.

10 Be confident: use your face, body language and stance to own the stage.

Not all researchers recognize the value of taking time out of the lab to tell colleagues about their work. “Some have this idea that if you're spending time giving a talk, you're spending time on marketing which could be better spent doing science,” says Dave Rubenson, co-founder of Los Angeles-based nobadslides.com, a company that provides courses on giving effective slide presentations. “In fact the process of creating a compelling talk and getting your audience to understand it improves both your understanding and theirs, and is central to science itself.” On top of this, Rubenson says, presenting at conferences is a great way to attract the collaborators who can help you break new ground and advance in your career, but only if those listening understand what they’re being shown.

Nature Events Guide 2019

A good place to begin is in your audience’s shoes. They need to know early on why they should care about what you’re saying. What is the ‘story’ at the heart of your presentation? Creating a concise summary of your talk, upon which you can add complexity, is a better starting point than pondering which of your file of 500 slides you can leave out, Rubenson says.

Presenters often fail because they try to deliver too much complex information. Language and content, normally, has to be designed with the non-specialist scientist in mind. “You have to think about the least knowledgeable person in your audience that you care about reaching,” says Rubenson.

Another common mistake is the use of slides as ‘data dumps’. Remember those times you’ve squinted at overly-busy slides packed with eight small graphs and wondered why the presenter mentions only one? Keep that in mind when designing your own slides. Animation software that lets you add information to slides as you talk about it can help.

Above all, it is important to maintain the focus of your audience.

Conquer nerves

Credit: Institute of Physics

Different methods work for different people. Here are Eileen Courtney’s tips for keeping calm at the lectern.

1 Practice in an environment similar to the one in which you will give your talk.

2 Memorize key sentences within an outline, rather than learning it word for word.

3 Ensure you are within the time limit, so the clock is one less thing to worry about.

4 Wear something professional-looking and comfortable, not a new outfit.

5 Avoid overeating and limit coffee intake on the day itself.

You can help to prevent wandering minds by including summary slides at the end of sections. “You can think of a talk as a series of data dives,” says McConnell. “You need to come up for air periodically, and say ‘this is what we just learnt, this is the conclusion and this is how it links to the next part’.”

McConnell describes this and many more ways for researchers to improve their scientific presentation skills in a popular 42-minute online video. Another source of advice is the 2013 book Designing Science Presentations by American neuroscientist Matt Carter. While these offer useful pointers, most people find that when it comes to public speaking and presenting, practice makes, if not perfect, then certainly better.

That notion is central to Toastmasters International, a non-profit organization that helps individuals improve their public speaking skills through its network of more than 16,000 branches in 143 countries. At weekly or fortnightly meetings, members practice speeches and give each other feedback. It was to her local branch that Eileen Courtney turned last summer after realizing her presenting skills needed work. It seems her decision paid off. In May she was runner-up and audience favourite in the 3 Minute Wonder competition, a science communication challenge run by the London-based Institute of Physics in which entrants have one slide and 180 seconds to present their research to non-specialists.

“I’ve recently had to give other presentations and I’ve calmed down a lot, as a result of both going to Toastmasters and through teaching as part of my PhD,” says Courtney. “As you get more experience of speaking in front of a crowd, it becomes a lot less scary.”

Nature 564 , S84-S85 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-07780-5

This article is part of Nature Events Guide 2019 , an editorially independent supplement. Advertisers have no influence over the content.

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5 tips for giving a good scientific presentation

What is a scientific presentation?

What is the objective of a scientific presentation, why is giving scientific presentations necessary, how to give a scientific presentation, tip 1: prepare during the days leading up to your talk, tip 2: deal with presentation nerves by practicing simple exercises, tip 3: deliver your talk with intention, tip 4: be adaptable and willing to adjust your presentation, tip 5: conclude your talk and manage questions confidently, concluding thoughts, other sources to help you give a good scientific presentation, frequently asked questions about giving scientific presentations, related articles.

You have made the slides for your scientific presentation. Now, you need to prepare to deliver your talk. But, giving an oral scientific presentation can be nerve-wracking. How do you ensure that you deliver your talk well, and leave a good impression on the audience?

Mastering the skill of giving a good scientific presentation will stand you in good stead for the rest of your career, as it may lead to new collaborations or even new employment opportunities.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know to give a good oral scientific presentation, including

• Why giving scientific presentations is important for your career;
• How to prepare before giving a scientific presentation;
• How to keep the audience engaged and deliver your talk with confidence.

The following tips are a product of our research into the literature on giving scientific presentations as well as our own experiences as scientists in giving and attending talks. We advise on how to make a scientific presentation in another post.

A scientific presentation is a talk or poster where you describe the findings of your research to others. An oral presentation usually involves presenting slides to an audience. You may give an oral scientific presentation at a conference, give an invited seminar at another institution, or give a talk as part of an interview. A PhD thesis defense is one type of scientific presentation.

➡️ Read about how to prepare an excellent thesis defense

The objective of a scientific presentation is to communicate the science such that the audience:

• Learns something new;
• Leaves with a clear understanding of the key message of your research;
• Has confidence in you and your work;
• Remembers you afterward for the right reasons.

As a scientist, one of your responsibilities is disseminating your scientific knowledge by giving presentations. Communicating your research to others is an altruistic act, as it is an opportunity to teach others about your research findings, and the knowledge you have gained while researching your topic.

Giving scientific presentations confers many career benefits , such as:

• Having the opportunity to share your ideas and to have insightful conversations with other scientists. For example, a thoughtful question may create a new direction for your research.
• Gaining recognition for your work and generating excitement for your research program can help you to forge new collaborations and to obtain more citations of your papers. It's your chance to impress some of the biggest names in your field, build your reputation as a scientist, and get more people interested in your work.
• Improving your future employment prospects by getting presentation experience in high-stakes settings and by having talks listed on your academic CV.

➡️ Learn how to write an academic CV

You might have just 10 minutes for your talk. But those 10 minutes are your golden ticket. To make them shine, you'll need to put in some homework. You need to think about the story you want to tell , create engaging slides , and practice how you're going to deliver it.

Why all this effort? Because the rewards are potentially huge. Imagine speaking to the top names in your field, boosting your visibility, and getting more eyes on your work. It's more than just a talk; it's your chance to showcase who you are and what you do.

Here we share 5 tips for giving effective scientific presentations.

• Prepare adequately for your talk on the days leading up to it
• Deal with presentation nerves
• Deliver your talk with intention
• Be adaptable
• Conclude your talk with confidence

You should prepare for your talk with the seriousness it deserves and recognize the potential it holds for your career advancement. Here are our suggestions:

• Rehearse your talk multiple times to ensure smooth flow. Know the order of your slides and key transitions without memorizing every word. Practice your speech as though you are discussing with friendly and attentive listeners.
• Record your speech and listen back to yourself giving your talk while doing household chores or while going for a walk. This will help you remember the important points of your talk and feel more comfortable with the flow of it on the day.
• Anticipate potential questions that may arise during your talk, write down your responses to those questions, and practice them aloud.
• Back up your presentation in cloud storage and on a USB key. Bring your laptop with you on the day of your talk, if needed.
• Know the time and location of your talk. Familiarize yourself with the room, if you can. Introduce yourself to the moderator before the session begins.
• Giving a talk is a performance, so preparing yourself physically and mentally is essential. Prioritize good sleep and hydration, and eat healthy, nourishing food on the day of your talk. Plan your attire to be both professional and comfortable.

It’s natural to feel nervous before your talk, but you want to harness that energy to present your work with confidence. Here are some ways to manage your stress levels:

• Remember that your audience want to listen to you and learn from you. Believe that your audience will be kind, friendly, and interested, rather than bored and skeptical.
• Breathing slow and deep before your talk calms the mind and nervous system. Psychologist Amy Cuddy recommends practicing open, confident postures while sitting and standing to help you get into a positive frame of mind.
• Fight off impostor syndrome with positive affirmations. You’ve got this! Remember that you know more about your research than anyone else in the room and you are giving your talk to teach others about it.

Giving your talk with confidence is crucial for your credibility as a scientist. Focusing on your delivery helps ensure that your audience remembers and believes what you say. Here are some techniques to try:

• Before beginning, remember your professional goals and the benefits of giving your presentation. Start with a smile and exhale deeply.
• Memorize a simple opening. After the moderator introduces you, pause and take a breath. Welcome the audience, thank them for coming, and introduce yourself. You don’t need to read the title of your talk. But briefly, say something like, “today I’m going to talk to you about why [topic] is important and [what I hope you will learn from this talk]” in 1-2 sentences. Preparing your opening will settle your nerves and prevent you from starting your talk on a tangential topic, ensuring you stay on time.
• Project confidence outwardly, even if you feel nervous. Stand up tall with your shoulders back and make eye contact with individuals in the audience. Move your focus around the room, so everyone in the audience feels included.
• Maintain open body language and face the audience as much as possible, not your slides.
• Project your voice as much as you can so that people at the back of the room can hear you. Enunciate your words, avoid mumbling, and don’t trail off awkwardly.
• Varying your vocal delivery and intonation will make your talk more interesting and help the audience pay attention, particularly when you want to emphasize key points or transitions.
• Pausing for dramatic effect at crucial moments can help you relax and remember your message, as well as being an effective engagement device.
• A laser pointer can be off-putting for the audience if you are prone to having a shaky hand when nervous. Use a laser pointer only to emphasize information on the slide while providing an explanation. If you design your slides thoughtfully , you won’t need to use a laser pointer.

Not all parts of your talk may go according to plan. Here are some ways to adapt to hitches during your talk:

• Handle talk disruptions gracefully. If you make a mistake, or a technical issue occurs during your talk, remember that it’s okay to skip something and move on without apologizing.
• If you forget to mention something but the audience hasn’t noticed, don’t point it out! They don’t need to know.
• As you give your talk, be time-conscious, and watch the moderator for signals that the time is about to expire. If you realize you won’t have time to discuss all your slides, skip the less important ones. Adjust your presentation on the fly to finish on time, prioritizing content as needed.
• If you run out of time completely, just stop. You don’t have to give a conclusion, but you do need to stop on time! Practicing your talk should prevent this situation.

The ending of your talk is important for emphasizing your key message and ensuring the audience leave with a positive impression of you and your work. Here are some pointers.

• Conclude your talk with a memorized closing statement that summarizes the key take-home message of your research. After making your closing statement, end your talk with a simple “Thank you”. Then pause and wait for the applause. You don’t need to ask if the audience has questions because the moderator will call for questions on your behalf.
• When you receive a question, pause, then repeat the question. This ensures the whole audience understands the question and gives you time to calmly consider your answer.
• In a talk on attaining confidence in your scientific presentations, Michael Alley suggests that if you don’t know the answer to the question, then emphasize what you do know. Say something like, “Although I can’t fully answer your question, I can say [this about the topic].”
• Approach the Q&A with interest rather than anxiety by reframing it as an opportunity to further share your knowledge. Being curious, instead of feeling fearful, can help you shine during what might be the most stressful part of your presentation.

Communicating your research effectively is a key skill for early career scientists to learn. Taking ample time to prepare and practice your presentation is an investment in your scientific development.

But here's the good part: all that effort pays off. Think of your talk as not just a presentation, but as a way to show off what you and your research are all about. Giving a compelling scientific presentation will raise your professional profile as a scientist, lead to more citations of your work, and may even help you obtain a future academic job.

But most importantly of all, giving talks contributes to science, and sharing your knowledge is an act of generosity to the scientific community.

➡️ Questions to ask yourself before you make your talk

➡️ How to give a great scientific talk

1) Have a positive mindset. To help with nerves, breathe deeply and keep in mind that you are an authority on your topic. 2) Be prepared. Have a short list of points for each slide and know the key transition points of your talk. Practice your talk to ensure it flows smoothly. 3) Be well-rested before your talk and eat a light meal on the day of your presentation. A talk is a performance. 4) Project your voice and vary your vocal intonation and pitch to retain the interest of the audience. Take pauses at key moments, for emphasis. 5) Anticipate questions that audience members could ask, and prepare answers for them.

The goal of a scientific presentation is that the audience remembers the key outcomes of your research and that they leave with a good impression of you and your science.

Take a moment to exhale deeply and collect your thoughts after the moderator has introduced you. Don’t read your talk's title. Instead, introduce yourself, thank the audience for attending, and provide a warm welcome. Then say something along the lines of, "Today I'm going to talk to you about why [topic] is important and [what I hope you will learn from this presentation].” A rehearsed opening will ensure that you start your talk on a confident note.

Prepare a memorable closing statement that emphasizes the key message of your talk. Then end with a simple “Thank you”.

Preparation is key. Practice many times to familiarize yourself with the content of your presentation. Before giving your talk, breathe slowly and deeply, and remind yourself that you are the expert on your topic. When giving your talk, stand up tall and use open body language. Remember to project your voice, and make eye contact with members of the audience.

Ten Secrets to Giving a Good Scientific Talk

More people will probably listen to your scientific talk than will read the paper you may write. Thus the scientific talk has become one of the most important communication forums for the scientific community. As proof, we need only look at the rising attendance at and the proliferation of meetings. In many ways your research reputation will be enhanced (or diminished) by your scientific talk. The scientific talk, like the scientific paper, is part of the scientific communication process. The modern scientist must be able to deliver a well organized, well delivered scientific talk

I have compiled this personal list of "Secrets" from listening to effective and ineffective speakers. I don't pretend that this list is comprehensive - I am sure there are things I have left out. But, my list probably covers about 90% of what you need to know and do.

Most scientific presentations use visual aids - and almost all scientific presentations are casual and extemporaneous 1 . This "scientific style" places some additional burdens on the speaker because the speaker must both manipulate visual media, project the aura of being at ease with the material, and still have the presence to answer unanticipated questions. No one would argue with the fact that an unprepared, sloppy talk is a waste of both the speaker's and audience's time. I would go further. A poorly prepared talk makes a statement that the speaker does not care about the audience and perhaps does not care much about his subject.

So what are the secrets of a good talk? Here is my list of do's and don'ts.

The Introduction should not just be a statement of the problem - but it should indicate your motivation to solve the problem, and you must also motivate the audience to be interested in your problem. In other words, the speaker must try and convince the audience that the problem is important to them as well as the speaker.

The Method includes your approach and the caveats. To me , the Method becomes more interesting to the listener if this section is "story like" rather than "text book like". In other words "I did this and then I did that, but that didn't work so I did something else." This Rather than, "The final result was obtained using this approach." This adds the human element to your research which is always interesting.

The Results section is a brief summary of your main results. Try and be as clear as possible in explaining your results - include only the most salient details. Less salient details will emerge as people ask questions.

The Conclusion/Summary section should condense your results and implications. This should be brief - a bullet or outline form is especially helpful. Be sure to connect your results with the overview statements in the Introduction . Don't have too many points - three or four is usually the maximum.

These four items are the core of a good talk. Good speakers often broaden the Introduction to set the problem within a very wide context. Good speakers may also add fifth item: Future Research .

• Practice your talk . There is no excuse for this lack of preparation. The best way to familiarize yourself with the material and get the talk's timing right is to practice your talk. Many scientists believe that they are such good speakers, or so super-intelligent that practice is beneath them. This is an arrogant attitude. Practice never hurts and even a quick run through will produce a better talk. Even better, practice in front of a small audience.
• Don't put in too much material . Good speakers will have one or two central points and stick to that material. How many talks have you heard where the speaker squanders their time on unessential details and then runs out of time at the end? The point of a talk is to communicate scientific results, not to show people how smart you are (in case they can't figure it out for themselves). Less is better for a talk . Here is a good rule of thumb - each viewgraph takes about 1.5-2 minutes to show. Thus a 12-minute AGU talk should only have 6-8 viewgraphs. How many "viewgraph movies" have you seen at the AGU? How effective were those presentations? Furthermore, no one has ever complained if a talk finishes early. Finally, assume most of the audience will know very little about the subject, and will need a clear explanation of what you are doing not just details.
• Avoid equations . Show only very simple equations if you show any at all. Ask yourself - is showing the equation important? Is it central to my talk? The problem is that equations are a dense mathematical notation indicating quantitative relationships. People are used to studying equations, not seeing them flashed on the screen for 2 minutes. I have seen talks where giant equations are put up - and for no other purpose than to convince the audience that the speaker must be really smart. The fact is, equations are distracting. People stop listening and start studying the equation. If you have to show an equation - simplify it and talk to it very briefly.
• Have only a few conclusion points . People can't remember more than a couple things from a talk especially if they are hearing many talks at large meetings. If a colleague asks you about someone's talk you heard, how do you typically describe it? You say something like "So and so looked at such and such and they found out this and that." You don't say, "I remember all 6 conclusions points." The fact is, people will only remember one or two things from your talk - you might as well tell them what to remember rather than let them figure it out for themselves.
• Talk to the audience not to the screen . One of the most common problems I see is that the speaker will speak to the viewgraph screen. It is hard to hear the speaker in this case and without eye contact the audience loses interest. Frankly, this is difficult to avoid, but the speaker needs to consciously look at the object on the screen, point to it, and then turn back to the audience to discuss the feature. Here is another suggestion, don't start talking right away when you put up a viewgraph. Let people look at the viewgraph for a few moments - they usually can't concentrate on the material and listen to you at the same time. Speak loudly and slowly. . I like to pick out a few people in the audience and pointedly talk to them as though I were explaining something to them.
• Avoid making distracting sounds . Everyone gets nervous speaking in public. But sometimes the nervousness often comes out as annoying sounds or habits that can be really distracting. Try to avoid "Ummm" or "Ahhh" between sentences. If you put your hands in your pockets, take the keys and change out so you won't jingle them during your talk.
• Use large letters (no fonts smaller than 16 pts!!) To see how your graphics will appear to the audience, place the viewgraph on the floor - can you read it standing up? Special sore points with me are figure axis and captions - usually unreadable.
• Keep the graphic simple . Don't show graphs you won't need. If there are four graphs on the viewgraph and you only talk to one - cut the others out. Don't crowd the viewgraph, don't use different fonts or type styles - it makes your slide look like a ransom note. Make sure the graph is simple and clear. A little professional effort on graphics can really make a talk impressive. If someone in your group has some artistic talent (and you don't) ask for help or opinions.
• Use color . Color makes the graphic stand out, and it is not that expensive anymore. However avoid red in the text - red is difficult to see from a distance. Also, check your color viewgraph using the projector. Some color schemes look fine on paper, but project poorly.
• Use cartoons . I think some of the best talks use little cartoons which explain the science. It is much easier for someone to follow logic if they can see a little diagram of the procedure or thought process that is being described. A Rube-Goldberg sort of cartoon is great for explaining complex ideas.
• Use humor if possible . A joke or two in your presentation spices things up and relaxes the audience. It emphasizes the casual nature of the talk. I am always amazed how even a really lame joke will get a good laugh in a science talk.
• First, repeat the question. This gives you time to think, and the rest of the audience may not have heard the question. Also if you heard the question incorrectly, it presents an opportunity for clarification.
• If you don't know the answer then say "I don't know, I will have to look into that. " Don't try to invent an answer on the fly. Be honest and humble. You are only human and you can't have thought of everything.
• If the questioner disagrees with you and it looks like there will be an argument then defuse the situation. A good moderator will usually intervene for you, but if not then you will have to handle this yourself. e.g. "We clearly don't agree on this point, let's go on to other questions and you and I can talk about this later."
• Never insult the questioner. He/she may have friends, and you never need more enemies.

Miscellaneous Points

Thank you - It is always a good idea to acknowledge people who helped you, and thank the people who invited you to give a talk.

Dress up - People are there to hear your material, but when you dress up you send the message that you care enough about the audience to look nice for them.

Check your viewgraphs before you give the talk . Are they all there? Are they in order? This is especially important with slides. Try to bring them to the meeting in a tray, or at least check them to be sure they are not upside down or backwards when the projectionist gets them. It is especially annoying to watch people fumble to get a viewgraph right side up. Don't do this by looking at the screen. Just look at the viewgraph directly. If it is right side up to you, then it will project correctly on the screen assuming that you are facing the audience. Go over the slides or viewgraphs quickly before the talk. Some people attach little post-it notes to viewgraphs to remind them of points to make. This seems like a good idea to me. However, It is very annoying to watch people peel their viewgraphs from sheets of paper. It suggests that they have never looked at them before. It is faster, more permanent, and you are less likely to have a mixed up shuffle, if you put them into viewgraph holders which clip in to a three ring binder.

If you have an electronic presentation - check out the system well before the talk.

Mark Schoeberl and Brian Toon

1 Amazingly, in the field of literature or history the talks are not given extemporaneously but read from written text. Sometimes this is also done in science talks and it can be an interesting and different experience.

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A 10-15 Minute Scientific Presentation, Part 1: Creating an Introduction

For many young scientists, the hardest part of a presentation is the introduction. How do you set the stage for your talk so your audience knows exactly where you're going?

Here's how: follow the the CCQH pattern -- C ontext, C omplication, Q uestion, H ypothesis. Fit your research into this pattern, and you will be able to introduce your work in just a few minutes, using just 1 or 2 slides.

The video below show how to use the CCQH pattern using an example of published scientific research. You will see how powerful -- and how adapatable -- the CCQH pattern is.

Make sure you select 720p HD on the video (bottom right corner) for best resolution and so scientific illustrations and figures are clear.

You can also find this video, and others related to scientific communication, at the CLIMB youtube channel: http://www.youtube.com/climbprogram

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Ten Simple Rules for Making Good Oral Presentations

Philip E. Bourne

PLoS Comput Biol 3(4): e77. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.0030077

Rule 1: Talk to the Audience

We do not mean face the audience, although gaining eye contact with as many people as possible when you present is important since it adds a level of intimacy and comfort to the presentation. We mean prepare presentations that address the target audience. Be sure you know who your audience is—what are their backgrounds and knowledge level of the material you are presenting and what they are hoping to get out of the presentation? Off-topic presentations are usually boring and will not endear you to the audience. Deliver what the audience wants to hear.

Rule 2: Less is More

A common mistake of inexperienced presenters is to try to say too much. They feel the need to prove themselves by proving to the audience that they know a lot. As a result, the main message is often lost, and valuable question time is usually curtailed. Your knowledge of the subject is best expressed through a clear and concise presentation that is provocative and leads to a dialog during the question-and-answer session when the audience becomes active participants. At that point, your knowledge of the material will likely become clear. If you do not get any questions, then you have not been following the other rules. Most likely, your presentation was either incomprehensible or trite. A side effect of too much material is that you talk too quickly, another ingredient of a lost message.

Rule 3: Only Talk When You Have Something to Say

Do not be overzealous about what you think you will have available to present when the time comes. Research never goes as fast as you would like. Remember the audience’s time is precious and should not be abused by presentation of uninteresting preliminary material.

Rule 4: Make the Take-Home Message Persistent

A good rule of thumb would seem to be that if you ask a member of the audience a week later about your presentation, they should be able to remember three points. If these are the key points you were trying to get across, you have done a good job. If they can remember any three points, but not the key points, then your emphasis was wrong. It is obvious what it means if they cannot recall three points!

Rule 5: Be Logical

Think of the presentation as a story. There is a logical flow—a clear beginning, middle, and an end. You set the stage (beginning), you tell the story (middle), and you have a big finish (the end) where the take-home message is clearly understood.

Rule 6: Treat the Floor as a Stage

Presentations should be entertaining, but do not overdo it and do know your limits. If you are not humorous by nature, do not try and be humorous. If you are not good at telling anecdotes, do not try and tell anecdotes, and so on. A good entertainer will captivate the audience and increase the likelihood of obeying Rule 4.

Rule 7: Practice and Time Your Presentation

This is particularly important for inexperienced presenters. Even more important, when you give the presentation, stick to what you practice. It is common to deviate, and even worse to start presenting material that you know less about than the audience does. The more you practice, the less likely you will be to go off on tangents. Visual cues help here. The more presentations you give, the better you are going to get. In a scientific environment, take every opportunity to do journal club and become a teaching assistant if it allows you to present. An important talk should not be given for the first time to an audience of peers. You should have delivered it to your research collaborators who will be kinder and gentler but still point out obvious discrepancies. Laboratory group meetings are a fine forum for this.

Rule 8: Use Visuals Sparingly but Effectively

Presenters have different styles of presenting. Some can captivate the audience with no visuals (rare); others require visual cues and in addition, depending on the material, may not be able to present a particular topic well without the appropriate visuals such as graphs and charts. Preparing good visual materials will be the subject of a further Ten Simple Rules. Rule 7 will help you to define the right number of visuals for a particular presentation. A useful rule of thumb for us is if you have more than one visual for each minute you are talking, you have too many and you will run over time. Obviously some visuals are quick, others take time to get the message across; again Rule 7 will help. Avoid reading the visual unless you wish to emphasize the point explicitly, the audience can read, too! The visual should support what you are saying either for emphasis or with data to prove the verbal point. Finally, do not overload the visual. Make the points few and clear.

Rule 9: Review Audio and/or Video of Your Presentations

There is nothing more effective than listening to, or listening to and viewing, a presentation you have made. Violations of the other rules will become obvious. Seeing what is wrong is easy, correcting it the next time around is not. You will likely need to break bad habits that lead to the violation of the other rules. Work hard on breaking bad habits; it is important.

Rule 10: Provide Appropriate Acknowledgments

People love to be acknowledged for their contributions. Having many gratuitous acknowledgements degrades the people who actually contributed. If you defy Rule 7, then you will not be able to acknowledge people and organizations appropriately, as you will run out of time. It is often appropriate to acknowledge people at the beginning or at the point of their contribution so that their contributions are very clear.

As a final word of caution, we have found that even in following the Ten Simple Rules (or perhaps thinking we are following them), the outcome of a presentation is not always guaranteed. Audience–presenter dynamics are hard to predict even though the metric of depth and intensity of questions and off-line followup provide excellent indicators. Sometimes you are sure a presentation will go well, and afterward you feel it did not go well. Other times you dread what the audience will think, and you come away pleased as punch. Such is life. As always, we welcome your comments on these Ten Simple Rules by Reader Response.

Acknowledgments

The idea for this particular Ten Simple Rules was inspired by a conversation with Fiona Addison.

Also see the following guides:

Ten Secrets to Giving a Good Scientific Talk in Science and Society V1003 by Mark Schoeberl and Brian Toon

How to Give a Sensational Scientific Talk by Janet B. W. Williams, D.S.W.

How to Give a Talk by James Allan

Giving a Job Talk in the Sciences By Richard M. Reis

Spectacular Scientific Talks by Rachel A. Petkewich

Tips for Giving Clear Talks   by IvyPanda

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Scientific Presentation Guide: How to Create an Engaging Research Talk

Creating an effective scientific presentation requires developing clear talking points and slide designs that highlight your most important research results..

Scientific presentations are detailed talks that showcase a research project or analysis results. This comprehensive guide reviews everything you need to know to give an engaging presentation for scientific conferences, lab meetings, and PhD thesis talks. From creating your presentation outline to designing effective slides, the tips in this article will give you the tools you need to impress your scientific peers and superiors.

Step 1. Create a Presentation Outline

The first step to giving a good scientific talk is to create a presentation outline that engages the audience at the start of the talk, highlights only 3-5 main points of your research, and then ends with a clear take-home message. Creating an outline ensures that the overall talk storyline is clear and will save you time when you start to design your slides.

Engage Your Audience

The first part of your presentation outline should contain slide ideas that will gain your audience's attention. Below are a few recommendations for slides that engage your audience at the start of the talk:

• Create a slide that makes connects your data or presentation information to a shared purpose, such as relevance to solving a medical problem or fundamental question in your field of research
• Create slides that ask and invite questions
• Use humor or entertainment

Identify Clear Main Points

After writing down your engagement ideas, the next step is to list the main points that will become the outline slide for your presentation. A great way to accomplish this is to set a timer for five minutes and write down all of the main points and results or your research that you want to discuss in the talk. When the time is up, review the points and select no more than three to five main points that create your talk outline. Limiting the amount of information you share goes a long way in maintaining audience engagement and understanding. 

Create a Take-Home Message

And finally, you should brainstorm a single take-home message that makes the most important main point stand out. This is the one idea that you want people to remember or to take action on after your talk. This can be your core research discovery or the next steps that will move the project forward.

Step 2. Choose a Professional Slide Theme

After you have a good presentation outline, the next step is to choose your slide colors and create a theme. Good slide themes use between two to four main colors that are accessible to people with color vision deficiencies. Read this article to learn more about choosing the best scientific color palettes .

You can also choose templates that already have an accessible color scheme. However, be aware that many PowerPoint templates that are available online are too cheesy for a scientific audience. Below options to download professional scientific slide templates that are designed specifically for academic conferences, research talks, and graduate thesis defenses.

Step 3. Design Your Slides

Designing good slides is essential to maintaining audience interest during your scientific talk. Follow these four best practices for designing your slides:

• Keep it simple: limit the amount of information you show on each slide
• Use images and illustrations that clearly show the main points with very little text. 
• Read this article to see research slide example designs for inspiration
• When you are using text, try to reduce the scientific jargon that is unnecessary. Text on research talk slides needs to be much more simple than the text used in scientific publications (see example below).
• Use appear/disappear animations to break up the details into smaller digestible bites
• Sign up for the free presentation design course to learn PowerPoint animation tricks

Scientific Presentation Design Summary

All of the examples and tips described in this article will help you create impressive scientific presentations. Below is the summary of how to give an engaging talk that will earn respect from your scientific community. 

Step 1. Draft Presentation Outline. Create a presentation outline that clearly highlights the main point of your research. Make sure to start your talk outline with ideas to engage your audience and end your talk with a clear take-home message.

Step 2. Choose Slide Theme. Use a slide template or theme that looks professional, best represents your data, and matches your audience's expectations. Do not use slides that are too plain or too cheesy.

Step 3. Design Engaging Slides. Effective presentation slide designs use clear data visualizations and limits the amount of information that is added to each slide. 

And a final tip is to practice your presentation so that you can refine your talking points. This way you will also know how long it will take you to cover the most essential information on your slides. Thank you for choosing Simplified Science Publishing as your science communication resource and good luck with your presentations!

Interested in free design templates and training?

Explore scientific illustration templates and courses by creating a Simplified Science Publishing Log In. Whether you are new to data visualization design or have some experience, these resources will improve your ability to use both basic and advanced design tools.

Interested in reading more articles on scientific design? Learn more below:

Data Storytelling Techniques: How to Tell a Great Data Story in 4 Steps

Best Science PowerPoint Templates and Slide Design Examples

Free Research Poster Templates and Tutorials

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How to Create an Engaging Science Presentation: A Quick Guide

We’ve all been there – rushing to put slides together for an upcoming talk, filling them with bullet points and text that we want to remember to cover. We aren’t sure exactly what the audience will want to know or how much detail to include, so we default to putting ALL the details in that might be needed. But such efforts often result in presentations that are too long, too confusing, and difficult for both ourselves and our audiences to navigate.

Today I gave a workshop to public health graduate students about how to create more engaging science presentations and talks. I’ve summarized the main takeaways below. I hope this quick guide will be useful to you as you prepare for your next science talk or presentation!

The best science talks start with a process of simplifying – peeling back the layers of information and detail to get at the one core idea that you want to communicate. Over the course of your talk, you may present 2-3 key messages that relate to, demonstrate, provide examples of or underpin this idea. (Three is a nice round number of messages or takeaways that your audience will be able to remember!) But stick to one big idea. Trying to communicate too much in a presentation or talk will overwhelm your audience, and they may walk away without a good memory of any of the ideas you presented.

Once you’ve settled on your one big idea, you can develop a theme that will pervade every aspect of your talk. This theme might be a defining element of your big idea and something that can tie all of your data or talking points together.  Your theme should inform the examples, anecdotes and analogies that you use to make the science concepts you present more accessible. It should also inform your slides’ very design – the colors, visuals, layout and content flow.

If you have trouble identifying your big idea and your theme, you can try using what scientist and science author Randy Olson calls the “Dobzhansky Template.” Fill in the blanks of this statement: “ Nothing in [your talk topic, research topic or big idea] makes sense, except in the light of [your theme!] .”

Here’s an example for you: “Nothing in the creation of engaging science talks makes sense except in the light of people’s need for personal connection .” With this statement, I’m identifying a key aspect, a unifying theme, for my talk (or blog post) on how to create engaging science talks. We all crave personal connection. Yes, even to the speakers of science talks we listen to! What does this mean in terms of what we want or expect from these speakers? It means we want storytelling . We want to hear their stories, know their background, hear about their struggles and triumphs! We want to be able to step into their shoes and see what they saw. We want to interact with them.

Tell a Story

Narratives engage more than facts. By telling a story , using suspense and characters to pull people through your presentation, you will capture and keep their attention for longer. People also remember information presented in a story format better than they do information presented as disparate facts or bullet points.

“Story is a pull strategy. If your story is good enough, people—of their own free will—come to the conclusion they can trust you and the message you bring.” – Annette Simmons

Storytelling is a powerful science communication tool. In storytelling, both the storyteller and the listener or reader contribute to the story’s meaning through their interpretations, feelings and emotions. Liz Neeley, former executive director of The Story Collider, once said: “Science communicators frequently fail to understand that a feeling is almost never conquered with a fact.”

Stories are exciting. They elicit emotions. They help foster a personal connection between the storyteller and the listener, and a connection between the listener and the topic, characters or ideas presented in the story.

But what IS a story? As humans, we excel at recognizing a story when we hear one, but defining a story’s key characteristics is more difficult than you might think. If you ask anyone to explain what makes for a good story, they likely will have a hard time explaining it.

In her fantastic book Wired for Story , Lisa Cron starts by explaining what a story is NOT.

It is not plot – that is just what happens in the story.

It is not characters , although characters are critical components of storytelling, even if they are not human or even alive. Cells and molecules could be the characters of your next science talk!

It is not suspense or conflict , although these elements get us closer to what defines a good story. But just because your talk builds suspense does not necessarily make it an engaging story. What if we don’t identify with your characters?

The truth is that the key defining element of story is internal change . Think of how every Aesop’s fable communicates a moral or lesson that the main character learned from some journey. As Lisa Cron writes, “A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how he or she changes as a result.” The key here is the part about “how he or she changes.” A great story calls characters to a great adventure, but the adventure doesn’t leave them just as they were before. The adventure – like a scientific discovery that took years of experimentation (and failure) in the lab – leads to an internal change, in perspective or knowledge or behavior, as a result of conflicts overcome.

This is the secret of storytelling. A story asks characters to change and grow, and so the scientists in our stories must change and grow, discover new things about themselves and overcome challenges that force them to adopt new perspectives. So if you are giving a science talk about your own research, this might look like telling stories about your own struggles, growths and changes in perspective as you made your journey to discovery!

How can you bring a story of internal change to your next science presentation or talk?

What is one of the most common mistakes people make when creating slides to accompany a science talk? They use WAY too much text, and they use visuals as an afterthought. Worse yet, they use visuals that are copyrighted without attribution. They use stock imagery that reinforces stereotypes. They use visuals pasted from a Google search that don’t help the viewer understand or interpret what is said or written on the slides.

Visuals can be a powerful tool to advance audience learning or engagement during your science talks. You can use visuals to provide concrete examples of concepts you are talking about. You can use imagery that sparks thought or emotion. You can use visuals that reinforce your BIG idea or the theme of your talk, in a way that will make your talk more memorable for them. Yes, you might need to use a scientific figure, graph, chart or data visualization here and there if you are giving a more technical scientific talk, and that’s ok as long as you also talk the audience through this visual. Don’t assume they can listen to you talk about something different while also taking the time to interpret the message in this graphic or visualization – they can’t.

The same goes for text. You are demanding way too much brainpower of your audience to expect them to listen to you while also reading your slides. And if you are saying the same things as are written on your slides, they will grow bored. Simple visual aids used the right way, however, can delight your audience and help them better understand what you are saying.

Consider working with a professional artist or designer to create visuals for the slides of your next science talk!  They excel at creating visuals that capture people’s attention, curiosity and emotions. And if you do this, your visuals will perfectly match what you are trying to communicate in words, boosting learning and understanding.

Foster Interaction

A good science talk or presentation gives the audience opportunities to interact with you! This could be through questions, activities, discussions or thought experiments. Let the audience explore your data or interpretations with you. They will be more engaged and likely trust you more as a result, because they felt heard .

Personalize!

Most great science speakers make themselves vulnerable in a way – they tell personal stories of struggles, growth and discovery. Personal stories are engaging. They also help the audience care about what the speaker has to say.

It can be scary to talk about yourself, especially for a scientist who has been trained to focus solely on the data. But the humans listening to your talk or presentation crave human connection. They will also grab hold of anything that helps them better relate to you. Give them that in the form of personal stories of obstacles overcome, of personal lessons learned, of work-life balance, of your fears and passions. Better yet, tell personal stories that reinforce your theme and show the power of your big idea!

Do you have other strategies for how you make your science talks and presentations more engaging? Let me know in the comments below!

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About the author: paige jarreau.

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How to Present a Science Project

Last Updated: August 17, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Meredith Juncker, PhD . Meredith Juncker is a PhD candidate in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. Her studies are focused on proteins and neurodegenerative diseases. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 54,022 times.

After creating a science project , you’ll likely have to present your work to your class or at a science fair. Try to give yourself a few weeks to plan and put together your presentation. Outline your main points, make note cards, and practice ahead of time. Make a clear, neat display board or PowerPoint presentation. When it comes time to present, relax, speak clearly and loudly, and avoid reading your presentation word for word.

Putting Together Your Presentation

• Finish up your experiment, research, and other aspects of your project.
• Get the materials you’ll need for your display board.
• Start to imagine how you’ll organize your information.

• An introduction to your topic or the problem you’ve addressed.
• How the problem impacts the real world (such as how a better understanding of the issue can impact humans).
• Your hypothesis, or what you expected to learn about through your experiment.
• The research you did to learn more about your topic.
• The Materials that you used in your project.
• Each step of your experiment’s procedure.
• The results of your experiment.
• Your conclusion, including what you learned and whether your data supports your hypothesis.

• When writing your speech, try to keep it simple, and avoid using phrases that are more complicated than necessary. Try to tailor the presentation to your audience: will you be presenting to your class, judges, a higher grade than yours, or to an honors class?
• Writing out your presentation can also help you manage your time. For example, if you’re supposed to talk for less than five minutes, shoot for less than two pages.

• For example, if you've made a volcano, make sure you know the exact mix of chemicals that will create the eruption.

Creating Your Display Board

• When you purchase your board, you should also acquire other materials, like a glue stick, construction paper, a pencil, markers, and a ruler.

• Consider using the top left corner for your topic introduction, the section under that for your hypothesis, and the bottom left section to discuss your research.
• Use the top right corner to outline your experiment’s procedure. List your results underneath, and finally, put the section with your conclusion under the results.

• Be sure to use a dark font color that’s easy to see from a distance.
• You can also write everything out by hand. Draft your lettering in pencil before using a pen or marker, and use a ruler to make sure everything is straight.

• Before gluing anything, make sure you plan out each section’s position and are sure everything will fit without looking cluttered. Use rulers to make sure everything is positioned evenly.

• Consider including 1 slide for each section, like 1 for the title of your project, 1 for your hypothesis, and 1 that outlines each main point of your research. If a slide becomes too dense, break it down by concept.
• Limit the text to 1 line and include a visual aid, like an image or a graph, that demonstrates the concept or explains the data. [6] X Research source

Giving a Great Presentation

• Take the time to iron your clothes and tuck your shirt in to avoid looking sloppy.

• It’s a good idea to use the restroom before you have to present your project.

• It can be really hard to resist, but try to avoid saying “um” or “uh” during your presentation.
• Speaking when you have a dry mouth can be difficult, so it’s a good idea to keep a water bottle handy.

• Remember it’s better to be honest if you don't know how to answer a question instead of making something up. Ask the person who asked the question to repeat or rephrase it, or say something like, "That's certainly an area I can explore in more detail in the future."

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• ↑ https://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/teacher-resources/science-fair-projects/#sciencefairpresentation
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KVTLT6QeTE
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHXidlH-dBw
• ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3hT6Ocf39w
• ↑ https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/science-fair/judging-tips-to-prepare-science-fair

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How to give a dynamic scientific presentation

August 4, 2015 | 12 min read

By Marilynn Larkin

Convey your ideas and enthusiasm – and avoid the pitfalls that put audiences to sleep

Joann Halpern, PhD, moderates a panel at the German Center for Research and Innovation in New York. (Photo by Nathalie Schueller)

Giving presentations is an important part of sharing your work and achieving recognition in the larger medical and scientific communities. The ability to do so effectively can contribute to career success.

However, instead of engaging audiences and conveying enthusiasm, many presentations fall flat. Pitfalls include overly complicated content, monotone delivery and focusing on what  you  want to say rather than what the audience is interested in hearing.

Effective presentations appeal to a wide range of audiences — those who work in your area of interest or in related fields, as well as potential funders, the media and others who may find your work interesting or useful.

There are two major facets to a presentation: the content and how you present it. Let’s face it, no matter how great the content, no one will get it if they stop paying attention. Here are some pointers on how to create clear, concise content for scientific presentations – and how to deliver your message in a dynamic way.

Presentation pointers: content

Here are five tips for developing effective content for your presentation:

1. Know your audience. 

Gear your presentation to the knowledge level and needs of the audience members. Are they colleagues? Researchers in a related field? Consumers who want to understand the value of your work for the clinic (for example, stem cell research that could open up a new avenue to treat a neurological disease)?

2. Tell audience members up front why they should care and what’s in it for them. 

What problem will your work help solve? Is it a diagnostic test strategy that reduces false positives? A new technology that will help them to do their own work faster, better and less expensively? Will it help them get a new job or bring new skills to their present job?

Dr. Marius Stan with Vince Gilligan, creator, producer and head writer for  Breaking Bad.

3. Convey your excitement. 

Tell a brief anecdote or describe the “aha” moment that convinced you to get involved in your field of expertise. For example,  Dr. Marius Stan opens in new tab/window , a physicist and chemist known to the wider world as the carwash owner on  Breaking Bad opens in new tab/window ,  explained that mathematics has always been his passion, and the “explosion” of computer hardware and software early in his career drove his interest to computational science, which involves the use of mathematical models to solve scientific problems. Personalizing makes your work come alive and helps audience members relate to it on an emotional level.

4. Tell your story. 

A presentation is  your  story. It needs a beginning, a middle and an end. For example, you could begin with the problem you set out to solve. What did you discover by serendipity? What gap did you think your work could fill? For the middle, you could describe what you did, succinctly and logically, and ideally building to your most recent results. And the end could focus on where you are today and where you hope to go.

Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, gives a keynote address at the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening’s 2015 conference and exhibition in Washington, DC.

Start with context . Cite research — by you and others — that brought you to this point. Where does your work fit within this context? What is unique about it? While presenting on organs-on-chips technology at a recent conference, Dr. Donald Ingber, Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, described the pioneering work of others in the field, touched on its impact, then went on to show his unique contributions to the field. He did not

present his work out of context, as though his group were the only one achieving results.

Frame the problem : “We couldn’t understand why our experiment wasn’t working so we investigated further”; “We saw an opportunity to cut costs and speed things up.”

Prof. Doris Rusch, PhD, talks about creating games to mimic the struggles of anorexia and the anxiety of OCD, at the 12th Annual Games for Change Festival in New York City. (Photo by Gabi Porter)

Provide highlights of what you did, tied to the audience’s expertise and/or reasons for attending your presentation. Present the highlights in a logical order. Avoid going into excruciating detail. If people are interested in steps you don’t cover, they’ll ask and you can expand during the Q&A period. A meeting I covered on educational gaming  

gave presenters just 10 minutes each to talk about their work. Most used three to five slides, making sure to include a website address for more information on each slide. Because these speakers were well prepared, they were able to identify and communicate their key points in the short timeframe. They also made sure attendees who wanted more information would be able to find it easily on their websites. So don’t get bogged down in details — the what  is often more important than the how .

Conclude by summing up key points and acknowledging collaborators and mentors. Give a peek into your next steps, especially if you’re interested in recruiting partners. Include your contact details and Twitter handle.

5. Keep it simple. 

Every field has its jargon and acronyms, and science and medicine are no exceptions. However, you don’t want audience members to get stuck on a particular term and lose the thread of your talk. Even your fellow scientists will appreciate brief definitions and explanations of terminology and processes, especially if you’re working in a field like microfluidics, which includes collaborators in diverse disciplines, such as engineering, biomedical research and computational biology.

I’ve interviewed Nobel laureates who know how to have a conversation about their work that most anyone can understand – even if it involves complex areas such as brain chemistry or genomics. That’s because they’ve distilled their work to its essence, and can then talk about it at the most basic level as well as the most complicated. Regardless of the level of your talk, the goal should be to communicate, not obfuscate.

Presentation pointers: you

Here are 10 tips to help you present your scientific work and leave the audience wanting more.

1. Set the stage. 

Get your equipment ready and run through your slides if possible (use the “speaker ready” room if one is available). If you’ve never been in the venue, try getting there early and walk the room. Make sure you have water available.

2. Get ready to perform. 

Every presentation is a performance. The most important part is to know your lines and subject. Some people advocate memorizing your presentation, but if you do so, you can end up sounding stilted or getting derailed by an interruption. When you practice, focus on the key points you want to make (note them down if it helps) and improvise different ways of communicating them.

It’s well known that a majority of people fear public speaking — and even those who enjoy it may get stage fright. Fear of public speaking will diminish with experience. I’ve been presenting and performing for many years but still get stage fright. Try these strategies to manage the fear:

Breathe slowly and deeply for a few minutes before your talk.

Visualize yourself giving a relaxed talk to a receptive audience. This works best if you can close your eyes for a few minutes. If you’re sitting in the audience waiting to be introduced and can’t close your eyes, look up at the ceiling and try visualizing that way.

Do affirmations. Tell yourself you are relaxed, confident — whatever works for you. Whether affirmations are effective is a matter of debate, but you won’t know unless you try.

Assume one or more “power poses,” developed by social psychologist and dancer Dr. Amy Cuddy opens in new tab/window of the Harvard Business School, before giving your presentation. She demonstrates them in this TED talk opens in new tab/window . Power poses are part of the emerging field of embodiment research (see a comprehensive collection of articles opens in new tab/window related to this research in the journal Frontiers in Psychology ). Research on power poses has yielded mixed results to date, but they’re worth a try.

3. Stride up to the podium. 

Seeing you walk energetically energizes the audience. They expect you to engage them and you have their attention.

4. Stand tall and keep your chest lifted. 

It’s more difficult to breathe and speak when your shoulders are rolled forward and your chest caves in. Standing tall is also a way of conveying authority. If you’re presenting from a sitting position, sit up in your seat, keep your arms relaxed and away from your sides (i.e., don’t box yourself in by clasping your arms or clasping your hands in your lap).

Not only will you appear more relaxed if you smile, but research has shown that smiling — even when forced — reduces stress. Plus the audience enjoys watching and listening to someone who’s smiling rather than being stern or overly serious, especially if your topic is complicated.

One of the most enjoyable presentations I’ve covered was on animal versus human cognition. It dealt with the evolution and activation of different parts of the brain. By inserting anecdotes in with complex didactic information, presenter Dr. Onur Güntürkün, Professor of Biological Psychology at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany, made the topic accessible and compelling.

6. Speak up. 

The audience came to your talk so they really do want to hear what you have to say. If a microphone is available, use it. I’ve seen countless presenters stand in front of a microphone yet somehow manage not to talk into it. Talk from your diaphragm, not your throat, to give your voice authority and resonance.

7. Take your time. 

A moment or two of silence as you gather your thoughts or move to a new topic can actually make the audience pay attention. Don’t feel you have to talk continuously, and avoid filler phrases, such as “you know.”

8. Talk to the audience, not the screen. 

Making eye contact with one or more friendly faces can relax you and help you connect to the audience. It will also prevent you from reading your slides, which you don’t want to do unless absolutely necessary (for example, if you forget the statistics supporting a particular point).

9. Stick to your time frame. 

We’ve all done it, but it’s not fun to have to cycle rapidly through your last 10 slides because the moderator has given you a two-minute warning and you’re nowhere near the end. Try to pace yourself. When preparing your slides and practicing (i.e., rehearsing for your performance), make a note on the slide you think you should be discussing when you’re about midway through your talk. This gives you a benchmark and lets you know if you need to speed up or slow down the rest of the presentation.

Related resource

The  Elsevier Publishing Campus opens in new tab/window  is a free online platform that provides lectures, interactive training and professional advice on a wide range of topics, from the fundamentals of publishing to broader issues like gender in research and open science. Researchers can register for training courses, learn from leaders in research and publishing, and take part in topical debates. For every module or seminar completed, researchers are recognized for their efforts with an awarded  certificate opens in new tab/window  from Elsevier.

Six dos and don’ts of PowerPoint slides

1. Less is more.  Although there are no “rules,” I’ve found that 20-25 slides work well for a one hour presentation. You’ll have a better idea what works for you if you time yourself during a practice session.

2. Create sections.  Use a title slide to start a new section or change the subject. This will also help you organize your presentation and make sure it flows logically.

3. Avoid clutter.  Stick to three to five bullet points per slide  at most . Bullet points should contain key words — not complete sentences. For examples of what  not  to do, see this recent editorial in the  Washington Post , which  urges a ban on PowerPoint presentations opens in new tab/window .

4. Make it readable.  Rule of thumb for fonts: 28-40 point for headlines; 18-28 for text; 12-14 for references. Use  sans serif  fonts, and make sure you have a strong contrast between the background and text (e.g., black or dark blue text on a white background; white text on a blue background). Don’t use ALL CAPS; underscore a point by putting it in italics or bold (underlining can make the text more difficult to read).

5. Use visuals.  In a recent talk, presenters explained why biological image processing and analysis is a hot field in laboratory R&D. The reason is simple: you can tell a lot more about cells with an image versus a cell count. The same is true of your presentation: a single image of something particularly relevant to your work is more engaging and has the potential to convey more information than words.

That said, it’s important to keep the visual simple — an image of a single cell or pathway, for example. If you use graphs to show comparisons or results, indicate what the axes represent and which variables (ideally, not more than two or three) you’re displaying.

Generally, steer clear of videos. One of the few effective videos I’ve seen was of a Caledonian crow creating a tool to obtain food, which Dr. Güntürkün included in the presentation referred to above. Videos of in vitro experiments and imaging results rarely help support a point because the low resolution makes everything look grainy.

6. Check your spelling.  Nothing takes away from credibility like misspelled words, especially if they’re up on large screen for a minute or more — or worse, repeated throughout your presentation. After you use spell check, proof your presentation yourself. Let a day go by if possible; it’s easier to pick up errors after a break.

Contributor

Marilynn Larkin

Writer and Editor for medical, scientific and consumer audiences

Home Blog Education How to Prepare Your Scientific Presentation

How to Prepare Your Scientific Presentation

Since the dawn of time, humans were eager to find explanations for the world around them. At first, our scientific method was very simplistic and somewhat naive. We observed and reflected. But with the progressive evolution of research methods and thinking paradigms, we arrived into the modern era of enlightenment and science. So what represents the modern scientific method and how can you accurately share and present your research findings to others? These are the two fundamental questions we attempt to answer in this post. 

What is the Scientific Method?

To better understand the concept, let’s start with this scientific method definition from the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography :

The scientific method is a way of conducting research, based on theory construction, the generation of testable hypotheses, their empirical testing, and the revision of theory if the hypothesis is rejected. 

Essentially, a scientific method is a cumulative term, used to describe the process any scientist uses to objectively interpret the world (and specific phenomenon) around them. 

The scientific method is the opposite of beliefs and cognitive biases — mostly irrational, often unconscious, interpretations of different occurrences that we lean on as a mental shortcut. 

The scientific method in research, on the contrary, forces the thinker to holistically assess and test our approaches to interpreting data. So that they could gain consistent and non-arbitrary results. 

The common scientific method examples are:

• Systematic observation 
• Experimentation
• Inductive and deductive reasoning
• Formation and testing of hypotheses and theories

All of the above are used by both scientists and businesses to make better sense of the data and/or phenomenon at hand. 

The Evolution of the Scientific Method 

According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , ancient thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle are believed to be the forefathers of the scientific method. They were among the first to try to justify and refine their thought process using the scientific method experiments and deductive reasoning. 

Both developed specific systems for knowledge acquisition and processing. For example, the Platonic way of knowledge emphasized reasoning as the main method for learning but downplayed the importance of observation. The Aristotelian corpus of knowledge, on the contrary, said that we must carefully observe the natural world to discover its fundamental principles. 

In medieval times, thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, and Andreas Vesalius among many others worked on further clarifying how we can obtain proven knowledge through observation and induction. 

The 16th–18th centuries are believed to have given the greatest advances in terms of scientific method application. We, humans, learned to better interpret the world around us from mechanical, biological, economic, political, and medical perspectives. Thinkers such as Galileo Galilei, Francis Bacon, and their followers also increasingly switched to a tradition of explaining everything through mathematics, geometry, and numbers. 

Up till today, mathematical and mechanical explanations remain the core parts of the scientific method. 

Why is the Scientific Method Important Today? 

Because our ancestors didn’t have as much data as we do. We now live in the era of paramount data accessibility and connectivity, where over 2.5 quintillions of data are produced each day. This has tremendously accelerated knowledge creation.

But, at the same time, such overwhelming exposure to data made us more prone to external influences, biases, and false beliefs. These can jeopardize the objectivity of any research you are conducting. 

Scientific findings need to remain objective, verifiable, accurate, and consistent. Diligent usage of scientific methods in modern business and science helps ensure proper data interpretation, results replication, and undisputable validity. 

6 Steps of the Scientific Method

Over the course of history, the scientific method underwent many interactions. Yet, it still carries some of the integral steps our ancestors used to analyze the world such as observation and inductive reasoning. However, the modern scientific method steps differ a bit. 

1. Make an Observation 

An observation serves as a baseline for your research. There are two important characteristics for a good research observation:

• It must be objective, not subjective. 
• It must be verifiable, meaning others can say it’s true or false with this. 

For example, This apple is red (objective/verifiable observation). This apple is delicious (subjective, harder-to-verify observation).

2. Develop a Hypothesis

Observations tell us about the present or past. But the goal of science is to glean in the future. A scientific hypothesis is based on prior knowledge and produced through reasoning as an attempt to descriptive a future event.

Here are characteristics of a good scientific hypothesis: 

• General and tentative idea
• Agrees with all available observations
• Testable and potentially falsifiable

Remember: If we state our hypothesis to indicate there is no effect, our hypothesis is a cause-and-effect relationship . A hypothesis, which asserts no effect, is called a null hypothesis. 

3. Make a Prediction 

A hypothesis is a mental “launchpad” for predicting the existence of other phenomena or quantitative results of new observations.

Going back to an earlier example here’s how to turn it into a hypothesis and a potential prediction for proving it. For example: If this apple is red, other apples of this type should be red too. 

Your goal is then to decide which variables can help you prove or disprove your hypothesis and prepare to test these. 

4. Perform an Experiment 

Collect all the information around variables that will help you prove or disprove your prediction. According to the scientific method, a hypothesis has to be discarded or modified if its predictions are clearly and repeatedly incompatible with experimental results.

Yes, you may come up with an elegant theory. However, if your hypothetical predictions cannot be backed by experimental results, you cannot use them as a valid explanation of the phenomenon. 

5. Analyze the Results of the Experiment

To come up with proof for your hypothesis, use different statistical analysis methods to interpret the meaning behind your data.

Remember to stay objective and emotionally unattached to your results. If 95 apples turned red, but 5 were yellow, does it disprove your hypothesis? Not entirely. It may mean that you didn’t account for all variables and must adapt the parameters of your experiment. 

Here are some common data analysis techniques, used as a part of a scientific method: 

• Statistical analysis
• Cause and effect analysis (see cause and effect analysis slides )
• Regression analysis
• Factor analysis
• Cluster analysis
• Time series analysis
• Diagnostic analysis
• Root cause analysis (see root cause analysis slides )

6. Draw a Conclusion 

Every experiment has two possible outcomes:

• The results correspond to the prediction
• The results disprove the prediction 

If that’s the latter, as a scientist you must discard the prediction then and most likely also rework the hypothesis based on it. 

How to Give a Scientific Presentation to Showcase Your Methods

Whether you are doing a poster session, conference talk, or follow-up presentation on a recently published journal article, most of your peers need to know how you’ve arrived at the presented conclusions.

In other words, they will probe your scientific method for gaps to ensure that your results are fair and possible to replicate. So that they could incorporate your theories in their research too. Thus your scientific presentation must be sharp, on-point, and focus clearly on your research approaches. 

Below we propose a quick framework for creating a compelling scientific presentation in PowerPoint (+ some helpful templates!). 

1. Open with a Research Question 

Here’s how to start a scientific presentation with ease: share your research question. On the first slide, briefly recap how your thought process went. Briefly state what was the underlying aim of your research: Share your main hypothesis, mention if you could prove or disprove them. 

It might be tempting to pack a lot of ideas into your first slide but don’t. Keep the opening of your presentation short to pique the audience’s initial interest and set the stage for the follow-up narrative.

2. Disclose Your Methods

Whether you are doing a science poster presentation or conference talk, many audience members would be curious to understand how you arrived at your results. Deliver this information at the beginning of your presentation to avoid any ambiguities. 

Here’s how to organize your science methods on a presentation: 

• Do not use bullet points or full sentences. Use diagrams and structured images to list the methods
• Use visuals and iconography to use metaphors where possible.
• Organize your methods by groups e.g. quantifiable and non-quantifiable

Finally, when you work on visuals for your presentation — charts, graphs, illustrations, etc. — think from the perspective of a subject novice. Does the image really convey the key information around the subject? Does it help break down complex ideas?

3. Spotlight the Results 

Obviously, the research results will be your biggest bragging right. However, don’t over-pack your presentation with a long-winded discussion of your findings and how revolutionary these may be for the community. 

Rather than writing a wall of text, do this instead:

• Use graphs with large axis values/numbers to showcase the findings in great detail
• Prioritize formats that are known to everybody (e.g. odds ratios, Kaplan Meier curves, etc.)
• Do not include more than 5 lines of plain text per slide 

Overall, when you feel that the results slide gets too cramped, it’s best to move the data to a new one. 

Also, as you work on organizing data on your scientific presentation PowerPoint template , think if there are obvious limitations and gaps. If yes, make sure you acknowledge them during your speech.

4. Mention Study Limitations 

The scientific method mandates objectivity. That’s why every researcher must clearly state what was excluded from their study. Remember: no piece of scientific research is truly universal and has certain boundaries. However, when you fail to personally state those, others might struggle to draw the line themselves and replicate your results. Then, if they fail to do so, they’d question the viability of your research.

5. Conclude with a Memorable Takeaway Message 

Every experienced speaker will tell you that the audience best retains the information they hear first and last. Most people will attend more than one scientific presentation during the day. 

So if you want the audience to better remember your talk, brainstorm a take-home message for the last slide of your presentation. Think of your last slide texts as an elevator pitch — a short, concluding message, summarizing your research.

To Conclude

Today we have no shortage of research and scientific methods for testing and proving our hypothesis. However, unlike our ancestors, most scientists experience deeper scrutiny when it comes to presenting and explaining their findings to others. That’s why it’s important to ensure that your scientific presentation clearly relays the aim, vector, and thought process behind your research.

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Welcome Speech for a Scientific Conference: Examples & Tips

Published on 15 Feb 2022

Having a well written welcome speech that you’re confident about goes a long way in overcoming public speaking nervousness.

A great welcome speech sets the tone for the conference. It makes everyone feel welcome and creates the appropriate environment for the exchange of knowledge. The speech should broadly outline the contents of the event and, most importantly, make everyone feel excited for what’s to come.

In this article, you will find our best tips to create a successful welcome speech and some examples with analysis for inspiration.

Quick Tips for a successful welcome speech

Formal vs. informal language.

The first thing you should decide is whether you want to use formal or informal language. For larger events that include scientists of various fields where everybody might not know each other, you may want to use formal language. For smaller yearly conferences for researchers in your field where most people know each other, it’s common to use informal language.

I find that, in general, a rather informal or casual speech is more successful. That way you set the tone and bring everyone to the same level, promoting questions, comments, and socialization during the event.

Greet and welcome everyone

Start with a warm welcome. As alluded before, this can range from very formal (“Good morning to all attendees”) to informal (“Hello and welcome, everyone!”). These will be your first words, so you need to grab everyone’s attention—use a clear, strong voice.

A smile goes a long way to make everyone feel welcome and in a good mood. Make eye contact as you start addressing the room.

It can be great to inject a bit of humor, if appropriate. It could be something as simple as, “We are lucky to be in such a beautiful location with so many beaches close by. I hope that is not the main reason you’re here!”.

Talk about the event’s history and purpose

Is it a first-time event, a yearly conference put on by a scientific organization? In any case, you’ll want to mention the motivation behind the conference, what brings you together. If the event is related to a specific organization, you can mention its history and purpose.

Mention any distinguished guests

It is common for scientific conferences to have one or more distinguished guests or speakers. Mention them and thank them for accepting the invitation to participate. Make sure you have their names, credentials and affiliations correct.  

Thank creators and/or organizers

If the event is being held for the first time, thank the creators by name. Give some words of appreciation to the organizing committee. You don’t need to mention every single person involved, but rather the essential ones.

State the main topic(s)

Mention the main topic(s) of the conference, the common interests for all attendees. For annual conferences of scientific organizations, a specific subject within the field is usually chosen for each year. For example, for an annual meeting of an immunology organization, the year's topic could be “Infectious Diseases” or “Immunotherapies.”

Touch on the agenda

Briefly outline the event’s agenda. You can mention whether there will be sessions with specific (sub)topics, poster presentations, spaces for exchange and networking. Don’t get  into too many details. You can direct people to the conference brochure, if there is one, for specifics on the schedule.

Motivate everybody

End your speech on a high note by getting everyone excited about the talks to come. Highlight all the strengths of the conference: any high-impact research that will be shown, the variety of topics that will be covered, the great number of attendees, the different countries represented.

Introduce the first speaker

If the first speaker follows your welcome speech, don’t forget to introduce him or her. Introduce them with their full name and credentials and give a brief description of their career achievements.

Rehearse a few times

Practice with colleagues and friends to get some feedback and familiarize yourself with your speech. You want to be familiar enough that you don’t need to look down at your notes constantly. However, don’t over rehearse. You don’t want to sound robotic, but rather natural and conversational.

Be sure you know how to pronounce all the names in your speech. Make eye contact with the audience and with specific attendees as you mention their names.

Keep it brief

In general, you should keep your speech short, usually around 5 minutes. Consult with the organizing committee so you know how long they expect you to talk.

In-person vs. virtual event

Virtual events are very common right now and likely will be for a while. This creates some challenges when giving a welcome speech. Making eye contact with the attendees is not possible when you’re on a video call. That being said, you can still give a great speech and get people excited virtually. Just make sure that people can clearly see and hear you before you start.    

Welcome speech examples

1. welcome and opening remarks - 2015 coast/ssew symposium.

In the above example of opening remarks for a scientific symposium , the speaker starts by welcoming everyone with a smile and lots of eye contact. It seems the attendees are in the same field of research and among familiar faces. Accordingly, her language is informal. She adds a bit of humor when she talks about collecting money in a bowl.

She follows by explaining the origin of the organization that the symposium is for, along with the main topics that will be covered. In the middle, she asks  the audience some questions to keep them engaged. Finally, she creates positive expectations by presenting a “sneak peek” of brand-new research and mentioning “leaders” in the field of microbiome.    

 2. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering Welcome Speech

Read this welcome speech for an annual international conference.

This seems to be a scientific conference with attendees from various countries and from a broad range of fields. The formal language used is therefore appropriate. The speaker welcomes the attendees and introduces the distinguished keynote speakers.

The origins and goals of the conference are outlined. He broadly describes the topics that will be discussed. Then, he thanks the organizing committee, companies and volunteers involved. Finally, he mentions “internationally notorious speakers,” a great way to spark people’s interest.   

 3. Welcoming Address | Dale Mullennix

In this welcoming address, the speaker starts by warmly welcoming the audience. He uses rather informal language since it seems this is a regularly held event where most people know each other. He throws in some humor, directly addresses the audience, and asks them questions to grab their attention at the beginning.

By conveying the value that the attendees will find in the lectures to come, he creates anticipation. He makes lots of eye contact throughout and doesn’t even have notes! By the end, he tells a personal story and connects it to the theme of the event.

With these tips and examples, we hope that you are inspired to write a great welcome speech.  Remember to keep it brief, conversational, and not overly formal, unless necessary. Eye contact and a smile go a long way.

If you’re looking for more general conference presenting tips, you should read our 15 Best Tips for Presenting at a Conference . 

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Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

How to Make a Successful Research Presentation

Turning a research paper into a visual presentation is difficult; there are pitfalls, and navigating the path to a brief, informative presentation takes time and practice. As a TA for  GEO/WRI 201: Methods in Data Analysis & Scientific Writing this past fall, I saw how this process works from an instructor’s standpoint. I’ve presented my own research before, but helping others present theirs taught me a bit more about the process. Here are some tips I learned that may help you with your next research presentation:

More is more

In general, your presentation will always benefit from more practice, more feedback, and more revision. By practicing in front of friends, you can get comfortable with presenting your work while receiving feedback. It is hard to know how to revise your presentation if you never practice. If you are presenting to a general audience, getting feedback from someone outside of your discipline is crucial. Terms and ideas that seem intuitive to you may be completely foreign to someone else, and your well-crafted presentation could fall flat.

Less is more

Limit the scope of your presentation, the number of slides, and the text on each slide. In my experience, text works well for organizing slides, orienting the audience to key terms, and annotating important figures–not for explaining complex ideas. Having fewer slides is usually better as well. In general, about one slide per minute of presentation is an appropriate budget. Too many slides is usually a sign that your topic is too broad.

Limit the scope of your presentation

Don’t present your paper. Presentations are usually around 10 min long. You will not have time to explain all of the research you did in a semester (or a year!) in such a short span of time. Instead, focus on the highlight(s). Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

You will not have time to explain all of the research you did. Instead, focus on the highlights. Identify a single compelling research question which your work addressed, and craft a succinct but complete narrative around it.

Craft a compelling research narrative

After identifying the focused research question, walk your audience through your research as if it were a story. Presentations with strong narrative arcs are clear, captivating, and compelling.

• Introduction (exposition — rising action)

Orient the audience and draw them in by demonstrating the relevance and importance of your research story with strong global motive. Provide them with the necessary vocabulary and background knowledge to understand the plot of your story. Introduce the key studies (characters) relevant in your story and build tension and conflict with scholarly and data motive. By the end of your introduction, your audience should clearly understand your research question and be dying to know how you resolve the tension built through motive.

• Methods (rising action)

The methods section should transition smoothly and logically from the introduction. Beware of presenting your methods in a boring, arc-killing, ‘this is what I did.’ Focus on the details that set your story apart from the stories other people have already told. Keep the audience interested by clearly motivating your decisions based on your original research question or the tension built in your introduction.

• Results (climax)

Less is usually more here. Only present results which are clearly related to the focused research question you are presenting. Make sure you explain the results clearly so that your audience understands what your research found. This is the peak of tension in your narrative arc, so don’t undercut it by quickly clicking through to your discussion.

• Discussion (falling action)

By now your audience should be dying for a satisfying resolution. Here is where you contextualize your results and begin resolving the tension between past research. Be thorough. If you have too many conflicts left unresolved, or you don’t have enough time to present all of the resolutions, you probably need to further narrow the scope of your presentation.

• Conclusion (denouement)

Return back to your initial research question and motive, resolving any final conflicts and tying up loose ends. Leave the audience with a clear resolution of your focus research question, and use unresolved tension to set up potential sequels (i.e. further research).

Use your medium to enhance the narrative

Visual presentations should be dominated by clear, intentional graphics. Subtle animation in key moments (usually during the results or discussion) can add drama to the narrative arc and make conflict resolutions more satisfying. You are narrating a story written in images, videos, cartoons, and graphs. While your paper is mostly text, with graphics to highlight crucial points, your slides should be the opposite. Adapting to the new medium may require you to create or acquire far more graphics than you included in your paper, but it is necessary to create an engaging presentation.

The most important thing you can do for your presentation is to practice and revise. Bother your friends, your roommates, TAs–anybody who will sit down and listen to your work. Beyond that, think about presentations you have found compelling and try to incorporate some of those elements into your own. Remember you want your work to be comprehensible; you aren’t creating experts in 10 minutes. Above all, try to stay passionate about what you did and why. You put the time in, so show your audience that it’s worth it.

For more insight into research presentations, check out these past PCUR posts written by Emma and Ellie .

— Alec Getraer, Natural Sciences Correspondent

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Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference

A scientific poster is a visual presentation that summarises your research findings and is typically displayed at conferences or academic events. Presenting one can be intimidating, but it's a valuable opportunity for feedback and confidence-building. Check out our top 9 top tips for successfully presenting your poster at a scientific conference.

Be welcoming

You should do your best to stand at your poster for the entirety of the conference poster session. If you do need to leave your poster for any reason, ensure you include your email address on it, so you can be contacted by conference attendees who may read your poster while you are not there. Read more tips for making your poster stand out here.

To make everyone feel welcome, stand to the side of your poster. This will make it easy for your potential audience to move closer and see the whole thing.

Think of your poster as a conversation starter. Smile and say hello to everyone who walks past and looks at you or your poster. Invite them to read more and, if they seem interested, ask if they would like you to talk them through it or if they have any questions.

Engage your audience

Remember to be enthusiastic - your research is exciting! Even towards the end of the poster session, when your energy levels may be lower, it is important to remain enthusiastic. If it is clear you find your work interesting, your audience are more likely to as well!

As you are presenting your poster, point to relevant parts of the poster so that people can follow as your talk through it. Try to avoid putting your hands in your pockets or behind your back.

Remember to also keep looking back at the audience, to keep them engaged and feeling involved in the presentation.

If you are already presenting your research to someone or a small group and someone else walks up, acknowledge them by making eye contact with them and smiling. Once you have finished with your initial visitors ask the newcomer if there was anything they missed that they would like a further explanation of, or whether they have any questions.

The most important aspect of presenting a poster at a conference is to make the most out of the opportunity you’ve been given. Who knows what might become of an interaction that you have in front of that notice board?

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Engage your audience

The “elevator” pitch

First impressions really count in poster presentations. To pique the interest of your potential audience you should have a very short synopsis (maximum three sentences and no longer than two minutes) of your research prepared, which contains three vital bits of information:

• What is your research topic?
• What have you found?
• Why is that important?

The aim here is to get your audience hooked and wanting further details. Keep the bigger picture in mind, as the audience first needs the background info to then get excited about the small details of your research. Make sure your pitch is punchy, intriguing and relevant.

Creating a story

Once you’ve reeled in your audience and they are eager to learn more, it’s time to build the narrative of your research. Like all great stories your research needs a beginning, a middle and an end. Aim for this to be 10 minutes long, or less.

The introduction should set the scene and introduce the main characters:

• What is the necessary background information about your research topic that the audience must know?
• How did this lead you to your research question, what were you hoping to find out and why?
• Who are the main characters (e.g. a disease, a drug, a cell type, a brain region, a technique)? What are the relevant parts of their “characteristics” to the story?

The middle section is the adventure, it answers:

• How did you get from your research question to your conclusion? Why did you choose to take that route?
• What did you find on your way? Were there any interesting twists to your research?

The final section is the conclusion to the story:

• What is the ultimate consequence of your journey? What does this mean for your characters?
• Is this really the end of the adventure or are there plenty more adventures still to come? What might they look like?

Remember: You are the narrator; it is up to you as the story teller to make the content both compelling and exciting. Attendees are not all experts in your field.; if you are unsure how familiar your audience is with your subject area, ask them.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Create a story

The importance of practice

Presenting your poster is ultimately a form of performance. In performances, whether they involve acting, music, sport or presenting, practice is a major factor in success. After all, however much of a cliché it is: practice makes perfect. Rehearse what you will say and practice presenting on your friends and family. Once you begin speaking at your poster session you will be pleased that you spent time preparing and practising.

Before the poster session starts make sure that you:

• Understand exactly what all the figures on the poster show, that you can explain them fully and know their full implications.
• Have your elevator pitch memorised
• Know all the key points to your research story without referring to written notes
• Are ready to answer likely questions with confidence, and know how to deal with difficult questions that you might not be able to answer fully.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Practice, practice, practice

Check the audience's understanding

Ask members of the audience whether you have been clear or if you should go into more detail, rather than asking if they understand, as this could make them feel stupid or ignorant.

For example, say something like “Have I been clear enough” or “should I go into more detail about……?” instead of “do you understand how this works?”

The handout

There are pros and cons to having a handout with additional supporting materials or key information from your poster. You must decide for yourself if it will be of benefit to you depending on several factors including:

• What is the purpose of your poster?
• What are you hoping to achieve with your presentation?
• Will it enhance your audience’s engagement with your research or not?

The major positive outcome of a handout is that gives your audience something to take away with them to remind them about you, your research and why they were interested in it. It also gives them a way to get in touch with you should they have further questions.

The main negative is that some people who may be interested and could benefit from speaking to you about your poster will take the leaflet, read it (or not) and never engage with your research again. It is an easy way for them to avoid talking to you, for whatever reason that may be.

If you decide to go ahead with a handout there are several items that should be included:

• The project title
• Your name and affiliation
• Your professional email address (and phone number if your happy for people to contact you that way)
• The key information from your poster (including a link to the relevant paper if it has already been published.
• Any supporting materials not included on the poster that may be of help.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: The handout

Expand your network

Look for opportunities to exchange contact information. If someone is particularly interested in your poster and wants to know all the details of your research, it may be better to suggest meeting them for a coffee after the poster session, or arranging another time for further discussions. This will ensure that other potential audience members don’t get bored and wander off without talking to you because they have been waiting too long.

Exchanging contact information and having further discussions can be a great way to expand your network and find potential collaborators for the future.

Tips for presenting your scientific poster at a conference: Expand your network

Dealing with feedback

It is important to welcome feedback, be prepared for discussion and not to be too defensive in the face of criticism.

If someone asks you a question or makes a comment that you don’t think is relevant, ask them to explain the relevance of their comment. They may have stumbled across something that you haven’t thought of because of their fresh perspective on the topic, or they might just not understand your research. Also, a negative comment or question might not actually be a criticism, but a genuine desire to understand why you’ve done something so they can fully interpret the poster. It is unlikely that someone has visited your poster to be vindictive, and if they have it is important not to engage them, shrug off their comments and move on to the next person who is genuinely interested.

Remember to thank the audience for listening and thank them for their feedback. People who have visited your poster could potentially be employers or colleagues in the future.

You got this!

In summary, presenting your poster at a conference is a chance to showcase your research, receive feedback, and connect with peers. Embrace the opportunity, be welcoming and enthusiastic, and enjoy the experience of sharing your work with others.

Neurowire blog posts

How to make your scientific posters stand out

Less is more: Advice for keeping your poster concise

10 tips for presenting your poster online at a virtual conference

How to get the most out of a scientific conference

9 simple and effective public speaking tips for scientists

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How to prepare and deliver a scientific presentation. Teaching course presentation at the 21st European Stroke Conference, Lisboa, May 2012

Affiliation.

• 1 Comprehensive Stroke Center, University of Alabama Hospital, Birmingham, AL 35249, USA. [email protected]
• PMID: 23470273
• DOI: 10.1159/000346077

Background: A scientific presentation is a professional way to share your observation, introduce a hypothesis, demonstrate and interpret the results of a study, or summarize what is learned or to be studied on the subject. PRESENTATION METHODS: Commonly, presentations at major conferences include podium (oral, platform), poster or lecture, and if selected one should be prepared to

Present: Plan from the start (place integral parts of the presentation in logical sequence); Reduce the amount of text and visual aids to the bare minimum; Elucidate (clarify) methods; Summarize results and key messages; Effectively deliver; Note all shortcomings, and Transform your own and the current thinking of others. We provide tips on how to achieve this. PRESENTATION RESULTS: After disclosing conflicts, if applicable, start with a brief summary of what is known and why it is required to investigate the subject. State the research question or the purpose of the lecture. For original presentations follow a structure: Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusions. Invest a sufficient amount of time or poster space in describing the study methods. Clearly organize and deliver the results or synopsis of relevant studies. Include absolute numbers and simple statistics before showing advanced analyses. Remember to present one point at a time. Stay focused. Discuss study limitations. In a lecture or a podium talk or when standing by your poster, always think clearly, have a logical plan, gain audience attention, make them interested in your subject, excite their own thinking about the problem, listen to questions and carefully weigh the evidence that would justify the punch-line.

Conclusions: Rank scientific evidence in your presentation appropriately. What may seem obvious may turn erroneous or more complex. Rehearse your presentation before you deliver it at a conference. Challenge yourself to dry runs with your most critically thinking colleagues. When the time comes, ace it with a clear mind, precise execution and fund of knowledge.

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• Preparing and presenting effective research posters. Miller JE. Miller JE. Health Serv Res. 2007 Feb;42(1 Pt 1):311-28. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6773.2006.00588.x. Health Serv Res. 2007. PMID: 17355594 Free PMC article. Review.
• Writing good abstracts. Alexandrov AV, Hennerici MG. Alexandrov AV, et al. Cerebrovasc Dis. 2007;23(4):256-9. doi: 10.1159/000098324. Epub 2006 Dec 29. Cerebrovasc Dis. 2007. PMID: 17199082
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Emily Lakdawalla • Feb 06, 2018

Speak your science: How to give a better conference talk

Bad presentation often gets in the way of good science. It's a shame, because science is awesome. So if you're a scientist who's interested in improving how you present your science, read on.

This post is a revised and updated version of one I wrote in 2013.  Here's a recording of me giving this talk at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona on February 5, 2018 .  

I can summarize my advice in three words:

Respect your audience.

Each one of the people in your audience is another person, like you. Their time is as valuable as yours. Work to deliver them a presentation that is designed for them, to inform and interest them in your work, and to leave them pleased that they spent that 5, 10, or 50 minutes of their valuable time listening to you.

Here are some questions to guide you in preparing a good talk.

To whom are you speaking?

Think carefully about your audience. Who are they, and what can you assume about what they already know about your topic? Is it an audience of your peers within your subspecialty? Is it space scientists more generally? Is it scientists and engineers? Is it a funding body? If it's the public, do they come to the room knowing a lot about space? Or is it a general audience?

The wider an audience you are addressing, the more context you will need to provide to them. If you do not provide the people in your audience with the information that they require in order to understand you, it is the same as telling them that you do not care if they understand you or not.

For a scientific conference, I suggest targeting your talks at an audience that is familiar with the scientific process but whose subspecialty is entirely different from yours. Are you an astronomer? Pitch your talk to a geologist. An experimenter? Pitch your talk to a theoretician.

Really good speakers are ones who manage to communicate something to everybody in the room, no matter who they are or how much they already know. To the relatively uninformed, you should at least answer: What is the question behind your work, and why is it important? What did you learn, and why does it matter? At the same time, to the well-informed, you should convey how your work has added to, broadened, or contradicted what has come before it.

Identifying your audience allows you to identify what words are jargon and what are not. Words are wonderful things, and our subspecialties have a lot of vocabulary that is dense with information. But if a word is not familiar to your audience, it will confuse rather than clarify. Sometimes, a jargon word is unavoidable; it may be the focus of your presentation. In that case, take care to define it more than once through the course of your presentation, and reinforce your teaching of the jargon word with context.

Acronyms and initialisms are a special class of jargon. It's easy to fall into a bad habit of using acronyms. They are often the most important nouns in your presentation. But unlike in a paper where you can define it, and people can look back if they forget what it means, there is no way to "look back" in a talk. I have attended many talks in which a TLA* is defined in the first moment, and if you miss it you are lost for the rest of the talk. Really, it often takes no more time to speak the words than to speak the letters.

(*TLA = Three Letter Acronym)

What do you want your audience to learn?

It amazes me that people prepare talks without ever asking themselves this question, but they appear to. A lot of people spend too much time describing their research methods -- what they did and what their data look like. It's easy to understand why people make that mistake. What you did is, after all, what you spent most of your time doing. But the whole point of your research effort was to learn something that you could then communicate to others. There's no need to force your audience to endure the same tedium. You can save your audience all that work by telling them what it was you learned.

Here's an exercise that I highly recommend: Compose a tweet summarizing your talk. It doesn't need to have perfect grammar, but it needs to be a sensible statement. In that limited space, you are not likely to say a whole lot about your methods! "I mapped clay minerals on Mars” describes what you did, but not why, or what you learned from it. "Large areas of Mars experienced rainfall over tens of thousands of years." Cool.

Make that tweet your conclusion slide. Make sure that your talk builds to that conclusion. How are you going to do that? Well....

What is your story?

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of narrative in a talk. Standing up in front of an audience, you are telling a story in which you are the principal character. Stories are fun. If you tell a good story, you hook your audience, and then they will willingly follow you even into the dark corners of your subspecialty.

Stories are also functional, especially for people in the audience who may be struggling to follow you on that journey. If, for example, you have managed to tell your audience that this is a crime story, pretty much everybody in the room should be able to understand what the crime was at the beginning of your talk. Then, if you lose them while you're talking about evidence gathering, you still have a chance of picking them back up again when you tell them: that was the evidence, and this piece of evidence led me to the perpetrator. Even if an audience doesn't get spectroscopy or understand what a general circulation model is, they probably get how crime stories work.

Maybe you are not solving a mystery, but are instead an intrepid explorer who has gone to a place no one has gone before. Maybe you have fought a pitched battle with a legendary monster of a data set. (This is a great framework for a presentation about a null result; you get to be the tragic hero.)

Narrative is not just helpful to your audience; it's helpful to you, too. It provides a structure for your talk and helps you determine what is crucial to conveying your message and what is not. This is very important when you consider the following question:

How long do you have to speak?

You cannot say all the same things in a 15-minute talk slot as in a 1-hour colloquium. You just can't. Don't even try. However, you can tell the same story, which is why I put "story" before "time limit" in this blog post. Do you have a favorite novel that's been made into both a miniseries and a movie, and maybe even a 1-hour show? Think about the differences in story among these. As you go from longer to shorter versions, you see reductions in characters, in settings, in subplots, and finally, in the main plot line itself. Yet the story (usually) remains recognizable. Exactly the same process is necessary to go from a scientific paper to a colloquium to a long conference talk to a short conference talk.

It is especially important for very short talks to practice your talk and then, if it is too long, cut out information that is not needed to tell your story. Think of the poor audience, especially the undercaffeinated, the jet-lagged, the many people in our highly international community who are interpreting your spoken words as a second language. You cannot solve the problem of a too-long talk by talking faster. Simplify the story that you are trying to tell.

Some people solve the problem of a too-long talk by running over time. Do not do this. It is incredibly disrespectful to your audience.

If you talk through the time intended for discussion, the message to the audience is: I am here to talk to you, not hear from you. I do not care whether you understood my talk.

If you run into the next person's time, the message is worse: I believe myself to be more important than the next speaker. I also believe myself to be more important than the entire audience's opinion about which talk they intended to be watching during the time slot I am usurping.

It is only now, once you have identified your audience, your take-home message, and the shape of your story, that you should begin to think about making a PowerPoint presentation.

What visuals will serve to amplify your story?

I've observed that a lot of people use the phrase "prepare a talk" as though it is synonymous with "compose a PowerPoint presentation." Don't do that. The purpose of slides is to emphasize or amplify points that you, the speaker, are making with your voice and your body language. No matter what, your slides should serve to enhance your presentation, not to distract from it.

In fact, you should be capable of delivering your entire talk without any slides at all, because I promise you it will happen sooner or later that an A/V disaster will require you to. (I once gave a half-hour talk about amazing Solar System photos without being able to show a single photo.)

The number one error that almost everyone makes with PowerPoint presentations: There are too many words on your slides. People do this as insurance against forgetting their words, but it is bad for a conference presentation.

We use the same parts of our brains to process spoken language and written language. If you show me a slide containing more than a few words, I must choose between reading your slides and listening to you speak. I am physically incapable of doing both at the same time. Instead, I jump between reading some text and listening to some speech and then I miss things and I get lost. If your entire talk is written out on your slides, why the heck are you even talking to me? I read faster than I hear. You could just stand up there silently and advance your slides periodically. Instead, of course, what you do is turn your back to the audience in order to read your slides aloud, which is, again, an act of disrespect, even if you don’t intend it as such.

When I first wrote this article, I strongly advocated putting no words on slides . I still advocate that position for public talks. But commenters made several good points about why some words are useful, so I've adjusted my advice. Titles on slides are valuable as signposts through talks, especially for people who don't share your language. Writing out jargon or otherwise unfamiliar words helps you teach those words to your audience. In every case, though, the text on the slide should serve to emphasize or underline the points you make with your speech. They should enhance or clarify, not distract from, the words issuing from your mouth.

One advantage of having few words on slides is that if you find you have misjudged the pacing of your talk, it's not obvious to your audience when you are skipping material or slowing down in order to return to the right pace!

Graphs are a challenge in talks. Used well, they can make a scientific point clearly and succinctly. Used poorly, they can be a distraction. Graphs that are good for scientific papers are typically lousy for talks. It's not just a matter of font size and color. Good paper graphs have high information density, so throwing a fully developed graph on a slide is worse than presenting your audience with a paragraph of text. 

Sometimes, you don't need a visual to emphasize a point. In those cases, consider not having one. Put up a blank slide and watch the entire audience suddenly make eye contact with you. I like to put blank slides in places where I am making transitions in talks. It is a reminder to me to remind the audience where we came from and inform them where we are going. I can look them in the eye and check in with them to see if they are still with me, and let them know that the story is about to shift.

Your final slide is a special slide. It may be the one that the audience sees the longest. Do not have a slide that says only "Questions?" Instead, put your tweet-length conclusion on it. Write your name and some kind of contact information on it for the benefit of people who want to discuss your work with you. And then thank the audience for the gift of their attention, and invite them to ask questions.

Try to anticipate the questions your audience will have about your talk. You might have some backup slides prepared after your conclusion slide. This is a good place for the graph from your paper or to paste in some text on your methods because they may be useful tools in your response to a persnickety question. With a little luck, you can look like a genius for having just the right backup slide in your deck. If no one asks a question, one of these slides can serve as an opportunity to say just a little bit more about your work, or to advertise your collaborators' presentations.

Preparing to give your talk

Practice . I'm not just talking about practicing the specific talk. I mean, practice speaking about your science. Talk to your coworkers, your friends, your roommates, your family, your hairstylist, your cab driver. My plumber loves visiting my house because he loves to talk with me about space. Take advantage of any opportunity to speak to people about science. Practice is important because speaking is a different skill from writing.

Regardless of who is in your audience, you must use less jargon in a spoken talk than in a written paper. In a paper, if I come across a term whose meaning I don't recall, I can look it up. In a talk, I can't do that. The words you speak may not be as precise, but more people will understand your meaning, and remember, that's the goal.

Relatedly: Simplify your sentences . In a technical paper, a single sentence can span a whole paragraph. It's a way to armor sentences against criticism. But in speech, if I lose track of which statement your lengthy list of clauses is modifying, I lose the whole sentence. Complete a thought before moving to the next. Avoid passive voice. Give your sentences clear subjects, verbs, and objects. If a point is important, repeat it. Repetition is like verbal underlining.

If you tend to talk fast when you are nervous, then practice speaking more slowly and carefully, enunciating your words. Don't be afraid of silences -- you don’t need to fill every moment with sound.

Other random tips that didn't fit

Color blindness is more common than you might think. What this means: never, ever use a color spectrum to represent a continuously varying property. Vischeck is a super website to use to ascertain whether your graphics will be incomprehensible to the color-blind.

Your slides will almost certainly not be able to serve as a stand-alone record of your presentation. If your slides could stand alone, then your presence wouldn't be necessary. Regrettably, many institutions use PowerPoints as documents of record. For that, either prepare a second version of your slides that has the text you intend to say as fine print, or include your talk notes as a backup slide after the end of your presentation.

DO put your name on your slides. If you want people to be interested in your work beyond the few minutes of your talk, especially if you are a relatively obscure person in your field (say, a student), consider putting your name in the corner of every slide. If nothing else, make sure to put your name and contact information on your conclusion slide.

A word on the number of your slides. It's a commonly cited rule of thumb that you should have about one slide per minute. That assumes that people (or you) will be reading your slides. This one-per-minute rule of thumb doesn't work as well if your slides aren't word-heavy. And it makes the PowerPoint presentation drive your talk organization, rather than the other way around. So, I don't find that rule of thumb particularly useful. Focus, first, on what you want to say. Have slides at appropriate places to emphasize what you are saying. If you can't say what you need to say in your allotted time, you need to say less. Eliminate slides or slide content that are no longer needed to support what you are no longer saying.

A word on animations. If your presentation contains an animation (and they can be awesome visuals), make sure you have tested that your animation works. If you do not have an opportunity to test using the exact system that is employed in the conference hall, have a backup plan that does not involve berating the A/V setup. I like animated GIFs in PowerPoint presentations because they always seem to work. If you know you will have control of the clicker, an even easier way to do a not-very-many-frame animation is just to put one frame per slide and advance them manually. That will work even if your PowerPoint is turned into a PDF.

A word on anxiety about forgetting your talk. I think a lot of people write their entire talk on their slides because they're afraid they'll stand up in front of all of those people and forget what they want to say. I have a lousy memory and have no hope of memorizing an entire speech. Here's a method I use instead. I try to memorize the first sentence I intend to say about each slide or sequence of slides. When I advance the slide, I glance at it, and that triggers the sentence I intended to say when I advanced that slide. If I have words on slides, they are usually just titles; those titles also serve as cues to help me get my intended first sentence out.

How to be more expressive when you speak?  If you're not naturally expressive, speaking at conferences isn't going to be good enough training. Try getting some experience elsewhere -- whatever suits you. Take an acting or improv class. Go out and speak to children. The younger the children, the more expressive you'll have to be to retain their interest. Volunteer to read to kids at a library.

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Scientific Presentations: When Public Speaking is Unavoidable

Public speaking is stressful. In fact, researchers use public speaking to induce stress in reticent humans (known as the trier social stress test). Thankfully, there are a wealth of strategies to keep audiences engaged and attenuate some of the unpleasantness of public speaking.

The best way to improve your presentation skills is to practice. Public speaking skills are developed over time and experience. Present your research often, at major conferences, small internal venues, as well as through outreach and community service. Practice presenting with friends and lab mates. It is easy to tell when a presenter is comfortable and confident; the feedback you need does not have to be from an expert. Note the tactics cogent speakers in your field use at conferences or talks available online. Practice these strategies, and those below for your own work and you will feel more confident when you present because you will know that you are well-prepared.

Show your audience why your work is important

Start every presentation with background information broad enough to catch the interest of every audience member. You need to convince the audience there is a gap or a problem, and that you can address it. Try to make your audience curious about a knowledge gap they can fill by listening to your presentation.

Know your audience

Start at the knowledge level of your audience and build from there. At a highly specialized conference, your background may not need to be as broad. At a larger national conference, you will likely need to provide more information to relate your work to the diverse interests of your audience.

The best speakers are dynamic, and can update their background based on the context of their talk. Before presenting, take note of the scientific fields of other speakers. Are their topics similar? If so, focus more on how your specific research topic fits into the field. Are other speakers giving background relevant to your presentation? Reference their presentation in yours to contextualize your talk “as Dr. Arya Stark discussed, …”

The best way to improve your presentation skills is to practice. Public speaking skills are developed over time and experience. Present your research often, at major conferences, small internal venues, as well as through outreach and community service.

For poster presentations, you can get to know audiences directly. Ask people what their background is before you start. Scientists love talking about their work, and this will provide the opportunity to practice reframing your work for the specific interests of your audience. Understanding how to discuss your work from different perspectives is also great practice for grant writing and developing powerful “elevator pitches” to increase the impact of your work.

Stay energized and enthusiastic

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic, and faithful, and you will accomplish your objective. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

To convince your audience what you are talking about is interesting, you must first be interesting yourself. While can be difficult to maintain enthusiasm about topics that you have spent years researching, sharing with your audience what made your passionate enough about this subject to pursue it not only helps communicate your story, it reconnects you with it as well. Presentation skills take time and practice to develop, but enthusiasm is a tool that can be implemented easily while other speaking skills develop.

Tell a story

Use an idea to unify your talk and provide a framework for your other ideas. Set up a problem in the beginning of your talk, and end your presentation by addressing that problem again with a powerful summary of your conclusions.

Imagine your audience as friends

Researchers are busy people, and taking the time to attend a talk has a high opportunity cost. Your audience took the time to listen to your presentation because they are genuinely interested in your work. They want you to succeed and want to hear about your research and ideas. Keep a conversational tone, as you would talk to a friend.

Instead of memorizing words, memorize ideas

Common presentation pitfalls are sounding rehearsed, reading off the slides, or overusing the same phrasing to convey an idea. Memorize the idea each slide (or figure) is intended to convey, or the order of ideas, rather than the order of words.

Avoid monotony

The attention span of the overworked academic is very short. Introduce variety into your presentation wherever you can – in your content, slides, voice pitch, voice volume, and word inflection. There are scores of resources available for teaching, use them for inspiration for your research presentations – try posing a question that you will answer, use video clips or colorful figures.

Pausing enhances emphasis; “um” and “like” detracts from it

Taking a moment to slow your presentation down gives the audience and opportunity to process your ideas. Further, the brief silence creates suspense. Always pause, never use “um” or “like.”

End with a powerful summary

The concluding summary is the last thing your audience will hear, your literal “take-home” message. When drafting your concluding summary, think about what you would want your audience members to share with colleagues. They can be your ambassadors if you can give them the information they need to talk about your work. What would you want them to share?

Useful Resources

• Free audiobook of “The Art of Public Speaking” is available from Librivox
• “TED’s secret to great public speaking” by Chris Anderson
• TED’s “Before public speaking…” playlist
• Develop an elevator pitch – a great guide is available here  http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/files/163926.pdf
• Audit a public speaking course for free through the University of Washington  https://www.coursera.org/specializations/public-speaking

Lauren Chaby is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Wayne State University and serves as an instructor for Developing Future Biologists, Klevis Karavidhais currently a graduate student at Wayne State University

Reprinted with permission from the authors and the NPA’s The POSTDOCket newsletter. 

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