Communication: Why
Undergraduate - measure of success?
Graduate student – measure of success?
After school – measure of success?
Your future success will largely depend on
your ability to communicate
Communication: How
Seminars
• Who is the target audience?
• How long do you pay attention?
• Why do you stop paying attention?
• How many things (conclusions) do you remember from
a seminar?
• Do you ask questions?
You are surrounded by opportunities to study
communication and develop your own style.
Elevator Pitch
The big game!
Contents of the pitch
• What you are doing – high level
• Why someone should care
Onion analogy
Excite don’t exhaust
Table of contents image
Pitfalls from the Bench to the
Podium
Every experiment
vs results that support conclusions
Chronological order
vs sequencing results to support conclusions
Proportionality of effort
vs significance
The One Rule for Communication
Do whatever is necessary/appropriate to
convey your information
The 2nd Rule for Presentations
Do not exceed the allotted time
The Most Important Thing you Must
Decide
What do you want the audience to remember?
What are the Conclusions and why should anyone
care?
• 2-3 Conclusions
• Significance and novelty
• Everything in the presentation should center
around Conclusions
• Excess/irrelevant information is bad
•
Distract/confuse/exhaust
Steps to Preparing a Presentation
Organize – information for Conclusions
• What data is necessary/unnecessary
• How sequence your arguments
Prepare Outstanding Slides
• Many schematics (concepts and experimental)
• Minimize words
• Animation to “synchronize” input to the audience
• Re-plot figures with focused information & large font sizes
Practice
• Beginning, transitions and hard parts?
• Check timing
Engage Two Senses to Convey
Information
Sound – what you say
Sight - what you show
Complement and not Compete
• Animation
Slides as a “crutch”
• For speaker and listener
• For non-native speakers
Your “Story”
Introduction
• Why are you doing the work?
Experimental
• What did you do?
Results
• What did you observe?
Conclusions
• What does it mean (why is it important)?
Each Slide (or Sequence of Slides) is
a Self-contained Mini-story Leading
to a Specific Conclusion
Title
• Meaningful – goal (introduction) or conclusion?
Experimental
• Schematic
Results
• Simple plot, table or image
Conclusion
• Simple bullet point
Chitosan Electrodeposition
Mechanism Gold-coated
H2
Cathode
2H+
Aqueous Solution
wafer
pH Gradient
After electrodeposition
Soluble Chitosan
Chains (low pH)
Insoluble Chitosan
Film (high pH)
Chitosan “recognizes” localized
electrical stimuli and responds
by depositing as a stable film
Chitosan film
peeled
from wafer
Langmuir 18 8620 (2002); 19 4058 (2003)
Electrodeposition of ProteinChitosan Conjugate
H2
2H+
Deposition




 


Cathode
pH Gradient
pH= pKa
50 m line
500 m space
50 m line
100 m space
20 m line
300 m space
Spatially-controlled protein assembly
Langmuir, 19: 9382 (2003)
Avidin Assembly at Individual Address
Avidin and biotin binding
Labeled Biotin
Avidin
Deposition
Sequential anodic oxidation control charge transfer (10 s, 0.9V)
Fluorescence
80
60
40
20
0
0
80 160 240 320 400
2
Charge (C/m )
Immerse chip in avidin (1 hr) and
then fluorescently-labelled biotin
Spatial and quantitative control
of protein assembly (avidin)
Shi et al. Advanced Materials 21 984 (2009)
Electro-addressing Different E. coli
Populations
(a) Schematic of Experiment
(b) Results
Deposition of RFPexpressing cells
Deposited films
Deposition of GFPexpressing cells
Red Filter
Deposition of
alginate control
Green Filter
Induction with
IPTG
Composite
Shi et al. Advanced Functional Materials 19 2074 (2009)
Enzymatic Charging
Accept electrons from biological
“mediators”
DehydroAscorbate (ox)
or
NADP+(ox)
O
Glucose dehydrogenase (GDH)
Gluconate
Glucose
GDH
Ascorbate (red)
or
NADPH (red)
NADP+
NADPH
OH
O
O
OH
OH
O
Q
QH2
OH
Q
30
10
0
(nmole e- /cm2)
20
25
20
15
10
5
0
0
Adv. Funct. Mat. 22 1409 (2012)
QH2
30
NFilm,Charged
NFilm, accept
(nmole e- /cm2)
Enzymatic Charging
2
4
6
8
10
Glucose (mM)
12
Mechanics
Title
• An abstract/pitch for the work
• Provides a brief overview
• What you’ve accomplished
• Why important
Mechanics
Introduction
• What is the purpose of the work?
•
•
What’s the problem/opportunity
What’s your approach to solving the problem
• Should directly link to conclusions, significance
and novelty
• Keep it short – this is generally the most difficult
part of the presentation
•
Background of other work?
• Inverted pyramid – from broad to specific (Plaxco, 2010)
Mechanics
Materials and Methods
• My approach: to provide information on a
“need-to-know-basis” (don’t ask the
audience to remember)
• Give the audience the methods information
they need only when they need it
• Embed the methods information in the
same slide with the results and conclusions
Mechanics
Results
• Simplify presentation and focus on the most
important things (only show data directly
relevant to conclusions)
• Describe the results (don’t assume the
audience can look at the graph and understand
what it means)
• Draw a conclusion from each result (data
should only be presented that is integral to a
conclusion)
Mechanics
Conclusions slide
• Be broad in conclusions
• Be consistent with the Introduction
• Be simple
• These are the words you would like the
audience to remember
• Indicate why the audience should care
(significance, novelty or applications)
Final Comment
Effective Communication
• Is hard work
• Is integral to your success
• Requires constant learning
• Life is your laboratory