Preparing Presentations

Presenting our research is an important part of communicating the science we’re doing in the lab. If done well, these presentations open opportunities to engage in discussion that may lead to new projects, better experiments, collaborations, or even your next job. While it seems like a simple task to put your results into slides and present it to an audience, doing this effectively takes a lot of thought and practice. It also takes practice to become confident (and maybe even comfortable or excited) when standing in front of a room of people and sharing your work. With that being said, much of giving effective presentations is learning your own presentation style and how to use this to your advantage to give the most effective talks in a broad range of environments. It is my job to provide you with plentiful opportunities to practice and receive feedback on these skills by giving presentations both internally and externally throughout your time in the lab.

While each of us will build our own “brand” of presentation tools as we practice these skills, there are some commonalities that will show up repetitively in “great” presentations. Many resources are publicly available for learning about giving effective presentations; I encourage you to spend some time reading in this space and adapting various aspects of what you learn in  your presentations. In addition to these resources and others you may come across, below is a list of tips and tricks that are relatively universal and can be adapted to fit any presentation style, and are things that I will encourage in my feedback to you:

• • Learn by example – When you attend talks given by others, pay attention not only to the technical information they’re presenting, but also how they present this information. After the talk, ask yourself if you’d consider it a “good” or “bad” talk, and then perhaps jot some notes about what they did that led to this opinion and compare to what you do in your own presentations. Eventually, I would encourage you to even consider what speakers do that distinguish a “good” talk from a “great” talk.

  • Know your audience – the type of talk you give to a group of experts in your field will be very different than one you give as a seminar to a full department or in an interview. Think carefully about what your audience cares about (or what they don’t), what they already know, and what you want that specific group of people to learn from you. Especially with a broad audience, there is a delicate balance between bringing the non-experts up to speed and going deep enough to keep experts engaged and interested.

  • Tell a story – Think about what you want your audience to remember from your talk. Tell them what you’re going to show them, why it matters, and repeatedly return to these points. While you will often be presenting information from a particular project/publication, presentations are a fun opportunity to consider tying together multiple projects and bringing in components from studies by others to tell a more comprehensive or impactful story (if done thoughtfully) – longer presentations provide more space for this but it can be done even in short talks! There is so much to be said about storytelling in presentations, and I’m happy to have further discussions on this if desired.

  • Use “paper headings” as a checklist, not a slide topic - For every set of results you present, note whether you’ve included information that is classified as an introduction, methods, results, discussion, conclusions, and acknowledgements. You don’t need to explicitly label them as such (and usually should not), and your talk can include multiple iterations of this for the different topics presented throughout your presentation.

  • Start big, go small, repeat -  As you present new information, it is often helpful to start broad with something the audience can relate to or connect to previous points you made in the talk, then move deeper into your specific results, and then bring them back out to remind again them how your conclusions relate to the big picture before moving on to the next set of data or topic. This can (and often should) be done more than once throughout a presentation!

  • Context is key – As is standard for both written and oral communication of or research, our story should start with an introduction that includes references to prior work in the field to motivate your studies, any quick “tutorials” on technical aspects that may be needed for a particular audience, and other “big picture” content that helps the audience relate to our key conclusions. You can also add smaller bits of similar context to support your presentation throughout the rest of the talk as well!

  • Minimize surprises – As humans, we lean into what is comfortable and familiar. When you give a presentation, you can use this to your advantage by strategically presenting information: present graphical content spatially similarly from slide to slide and be consistent in structuring the style in which you present concepts so your audience knows what type of information to expect as you present.

  • Less is more – People are not good at both listening and reading information at the same time. You want your audience to be paying attention to what you are saying, using what’s on the slides to support what you say. Fill your space thoughtfully with only the information that you need to tell the story – white space is good! You don’t need to include every figure or every result from the paper if it doesn’t meaningfully contribute to the direct points you want that specific audience to take away. Your job is to get them interested enough that they want to go read the full paper later – only include graphic information you will directly talk about in the presentation!

Formatting and slide building specifics

• • Number your slides

  • Put all molecular structures on your slides if you reference formulations/chemistry in the talk

  • Put all experimental conditions (intensities, wavelengths, temperatures, times, etc) on the slide, ideally in the same place every time – give them these details up front so they can focus on the bigger concepts and ask more meaningful questions.

  • Add citations to figures directly under the figure it corresponds to (no "references" slide at the end)

  • Use a “home base slide” to outline the talk and return to this slide as you transition between concepts or sections to remind your audience of the broader story, where you’ve been, and where you’re going. I would suggest structuring this slide to contain the main points you intend to make in words and/or simple graphics (i.e., not just a list that says simply: intro, methods, results, conclusions, etc in a bulleted list)

  • Practice the assertion-evidence method for constructing slides: Use slide titles as the conclusion of the idea you’re presenting on that slide (an assertion), and then build the slide with figures that convince the audience that you’ve proven the result (evidence).

  • Related to the point above, use statements (not questions!) to convey your assertions/evidence. Only in very rare, special instances is a question appropriate to present on a slide.

  • Use transitions to help step through the story rather than presenting overwhelmingly full slides of information all at once.

  • Minimize words and use font that is big enough for someone in the back of the room to see easily. Use words to emphasize key points only.

  • Use high quality images and figures. The resolution must be good enough to display the content crisply on a large screen.

  • Use schematics and cartoons to illustrate complex scientific concepts

  • Consistency in details – this is more important than you think! When giving talks, you want people to have all of their brain power focused on internalizing the technical information you are trying to convey, not adjusting to new fonts or slide styles. Templates are helpful for this (see group template), but also pay attention to details like keeping terminology/acronyms, placement of information, reference format, color and style of plots, and other small aspects consistent from slide to slide.

Delivering the content

• • Practice speaking slowly – you’ll inherently talk faster than you think you do.

  • Silence is ok! Rather than using filler words (um, so, ah, you know, etc) or stringing together thoughts in a lot of longgggg sentences, just take a pause and breathe for a second. This will help you focus and give the audience time to think about what you just said before you give them new information.

  • Explain the graph before the data – walk your audience through what they’re looking at in terms of axes and what the data is representing before you talk about the data itself.

  • Explain the terms before the equation/data– if you use equations on your slides (for most audiences, do so sparingly if you must), introduce what the equation is for, then walk through the terms and where they come from, and then relate the equation to your data/results.   

  • Practice your talk – know what is coming next, what points you want to make on a given slide, how you will transition to the next section, etc. Be sure your timing is appropriate for the timeslot you’ve been allotted for your presentation, leaving enough time for questions if appropriate for the environment.

  • Look at and talk to your audience (not the screen or your laptop). By doing so, you will be a more engaging presenter and you will also be able to note whether the audience is following and interested (shout out to the nodders and subtle smilers) and, if appropriate, modify on the fly if it seems necessary to re-engage.

  • Reference your slides for cues (not written notes/scripts). By the time you are giving a presentation, you should know your story well enough that you should be able to tell it without reading. This approach is much more engaging for your audience and allows you to be more present in your storytelling rather than focused on reading words.

  • Answer questions thoughtfully. It is ok to take a pause to think about your answer before responding and/or repeat the question back to them. It is also ok to not know the answer – use this as an opportunity to invite conversation and perhaps learn something yourself! Remember that questions are almost always being asked genuinely based on something you made the audience member think about. No matter how irrelevant you may think it is, do your best to answer with a mindset of curiosity and appreciation.

  • Dress professionally and take your presentations seriously – your presence sets the tone for how the audience will perceive what you say in the talk.

  • Have a backup saved of your talk on a flash drive or cloud server just in case.

  • Have fun, be proud, and be excited! We do science because we love it – let your passion for your work shine through in your presentations. You’ve put a lot of hard work into your research, and you should be excited to share it with the world! The best presentations I’ve seen are memorable not because of high-impact results, but how excited the presenter was to share them.