In a recent issue of Cell, there’s an interesting commentary on Molecular Movies… Coming to a Lecture Near You. The article got me thinking - wouldn’t it be useful if there were more skilled graphics and animation experts at the disposal of researchers?

Conveying the information content of your average proposal, report, lecture, or public exposure moment in a way that gets and keeps the attention of the non-expert is something that comes very difficultly to the average scientist. I know it does for me, not being experienced in anything beyond PowerPoint and Adobe Illustrator.
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Relating to my recent comments on seminars, a beginning grad student or undergrad researcher might wonder why journal club is such a good thing. Or you might not be wondering, since the benefits are more or less the same: digesting, discussing and analyzing research findings. But whether or not you realize the benefits of journal club participation, I’ve noticed that a lot of young PhD and Master’s candidates horribly under-prepared to present a paper. As a result, I thought I would enumerate some of the commonly held expectations of the person presenting the day’s journal article.
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Continuing in the same frame of mind as my last post, What Comes After Grad School, I was thinking about something that Alex said:

It reminds me of a bit of advice given to a fellow postdoc by Dr. Richard Hynes - try to attend every seminar. I would also add that in my comparatively short science career I have found that conferences are great as well. You meet people, people meet you, you learn, you communicate, and you develop this type of long distance acquaintance.

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For most scientists, writing their PhD thesis will be one of the most time consuming and complicated individual tasks they ever undertake. In my experience, the most common approach taken by students is to bury their head in the sand, get on with the research and only start thinking about the thesis when they absolutely have to, as the end of their PhD approaches. This obviously works, but it generally leads to a very stressful few months (yes, months) of writing. But it doesn’t have to be that way, with the right approach you can make the whole process much easier - here’s how: Read more »

Browsing around on the Nature Network blogs, I came across one interesting discussion from a couple weeks ago that few researchers actually spend much time thinking about (I think). Martin asked, “I was wondering how much, if at all, the quality of the writing of a submitted paper is considered in the peer review process?” A fair number of people agreed that the quality of the writing in the end doesn’t really influence the decision to accept or reject a paper. But good writing, especially in the first paragraph, certainly helps. Read more »

Poster presentations are a great way to show off your hard work, especially if you are just starting out in research. They are much less stressful than oral presentations, but still provide great networking opportunities and valuable practice at talking about your work. Follow these simple tips to create an attractive poster that will draw readers in and get people talking (to you!)

1. Choose your content wisely. The information you can get across on a poster is very limited. Choose a single aspect of your research that you think you can explain fully in a small amount of text and graphics and focus on that alone. Read more »

I have been at a conference today and don’t have too much time to write this, so this will be a quick article. After watching lots of speakers of varying competence I though that it would be good to outline some tips for great presentations. Speaking is an integral part of a scientist’s job, and honing these skills will is great for both your career and your confidence. Here is my 10 cents worth - feel free to add more of your own tips in the comments field below: Read more »