Academic Scientists at Work
Dos and Don’ts of the Job Talk
Academic Scientists at Work
Just introduced
• Thank you to the Search committee, chair,
colleague or whoever invited you to come to
meet the faculty
• Enjoyed meeting everyone, yada yada
• Optional
– Short anecdotal story about the trip or a joke
about your research. If you are not funny, just
move on to the next slide
Academic Scientists at Work
Objectives of this slide show
• Walk you through an organization
structure for a talk
• Illustrate some with font selections that
are clear
• Illustrate color combinations that work,
and those that Don’t
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Job Talk Introduction
• General overview of problem
–
–
–
–
–
No undefined JARGON
Keep it simple
Why is the problem important?
What is not known?
What problem will you be addressing that will help
solve the above problem?
– Background information needed to understand
project
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Objectives for Today’s Talk
• List of conclusions of main research
aims.
OR
• Questions leading to research aims
• Future Plans
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Results Part I
• Intro to question to be answered
(Maybe from list)
• Methodology used
• Experiment set up
• Results and Controls
• Interpretation, Conclusions…
• Next lead in question…
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Results part 2
• Repeat motif as in part 1
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Optional Summary of Section
• If you have slightly disjointed results sections,
sometimes it is advantageous to have a
summary section along the way
• Keep it short as you have already made the
conclusions
• Be prepared to take questions here, but it is
best to move the talk along and not invite
questions as it may derail your ability to finish
the talk on time
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Future Work
• This can be done in several ways.
• The best is a list of aims
– Aim 1: Investigate yada, yada, yada
– Aim 2: Determine if yada interacts with aday
– Etc…
• Or, Organize as questions or hypotheses
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Credit
• Advisor
• Others who did some work
• Those who supplied reagents
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Some Fonts to consider
• Sans serif fonts such as Arial or Helvetica are very clean
looking. These two are very similar and it is hard to tell them
apart (note the a). Many journals like their figures to be in these
fonts. So use these for your figures.
• Comic Sans is very popular and gives the impression that the
slides are personal - one of my favorites. Comic Sans looks
horrible in figures and should be used only for titles and
text slides.
• Times / Times Roman is very tight but is not as clean on slides.
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Size of letters
• Bigger is better (32)
• But it doesn’t have to be too big
• View your slides from the back of a regular
conference room
• This is 28 Arial
• This is 24 Arial
•
This is 18 Arial and is close to the limit that can be read. Also, if you
use this size in your text, you may already have too much on the slide.
Figures may have smaller characters but if the
numbers are important they should be large
enough to see. 12 point is clear but may be difficult to read. Remember clean &
clear.
Academic Scientists at Work
Good color combinations 1
•
•
•
•
Black & White
Clear & Clean
Effective but Boring
A white background allows you to use many colors,
but they have to be dark to project well.
• Bright Blues, Reds, and Orange are visible but are
not as appealing as others
• Darkening the colors helps: Dark Blue, Dark Red,
Maroon,Teal, or Brown’s stand out nicely
• Yellows, Pinks, light blues, and greens don’t work
well
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Colors that do not work on Blue
Backgrounds
• Do not choose Black
• Do not choose Red - you can see it on your screen
but not in the room
• This blue works on the computer but not in the room
• Greens don’t work that well either and are just ugly.
• The major problem is that these colors do not offer
the appropriate level of contrast
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Colors that do not work on a Black
background
• Blue on Black is tough to see
• Red - you can see it on your screen but not in the
room
• The major problem is that these colors do not offer
the appropriate contrast when projected because of
the ambient light and the contrast capacity of the
projector
• This may now seem obvious, but count the number of
slides at the next meeting that use red on blue or
black. OK, enough already!
• Browns almost work, but need to be lighter
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Colors that work on Blue
Backgrounds
• Whites over the best contrast here.
• Yellow will also work. If you can pale it
down a bit, its better.
• Very Light Blue will also work.
• Orange may work but needs to be light.
Academic Scientists at Work
Colors that work on Black
Backgrounds
• Whites over the best contrast here.
• Yellow will also work. If you can pale it
down a bit, its better.
• Very Light Blue will also work.
• Orange may work but needs to be light.
• If in doubt, you may try to Bold the
lettering to help it stand out.
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Presenting super colorful figures —
fluorescent images, etc.
Alyssa Bushey-Long
• Most fluorescent
images need to be
shown in a completely
dark room to see the
details.
• This means that you
can’t have white
surrounding the image
or it will make it difficult
for your eyes to see.
• So the slide background
must be black
(preferred) or blue.
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Presenting super colorful figures —
fluorescent images, etc.
Alyssa Bushey-Long
• Most fluorescent images
need to be shown in a
completely dark room to see
the details.
• This means that you can’t
have white surrounding the
image or it will make it
difficult for your eyes to see.
• So the slide background
must be black (preferred) or
blue.
• The background also makes
the slide blend in very nicely
here.
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Relative Something or another
Putting graphs on a dark background
106
105
Wild type
• Keep the colors light as
in the top panel
• Some like to put a white
background around the
figure to help it out.
• Note thin lines on
bottom graph - these
should be thicker.
big time mutant
104
103
102
101
1
A
B
C
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