Category: Public Engagement

 

1. Unless you can write very fast, don’t focus on getting every last detail down on paper. You would do better to actually listen and try to understand.
2. Take note of the person’s name; broadly what they study; things relevant to your own work; and most crucially anything they mentioned that you didn’t understand.
3. Look up a couple of things you didn’t understand after every talk, and make sure you don’t come out as ignorant as you went in.
4. Think about potential links you could make with your own work, as this is how many great discoveries are made.

 
I suffer from a disorder that I think is fairly common, where listening to people talk at me sends me straight to sleep. It doesn’t even matter if I’m tired. There are a few techniques I discovered that helped prevent this:

• Dressing for the talk so that I was slightly cold – though this isn’t pleasant.
• Asking myself questions about the person’s research and looking things up.
• Keeping a question in mind for the end that I want to ask the speaker.
• Sitting near the front, or close to people I didn’t want seeing me asleep.
• Sitting next to someone who agreed to jab me in the ribs whenever I fell asleep.
• Coffee

 

1. If your university has a student seminar series, this is a great place to meet other students and ask questions in a judgement free zone. Even if your questions are stupid, most likely other people had the same question.
2. Ask other students if you can watch them do procedures you are unfamiliar with; there is no better time to learn these things than now. However, it is important to remember they are students as well and may not be performing the technique optimally.
3. Take thorough notes when being taught new techniques and video it if you can so it is easier to remind yourself if you don’t use it regularly.
4. Don’t form collaborations without telling your supervisor, and make sure they are relevant to your work.

 
It wasn’t until I was applying for jobs that I realised how important it was to have experience with multiple techniques. I could have greatly increased my narrow range by learning from other students.

One thing I did do was gain a few middle author papers by contributing my skills to other people’s projects, which was very useful.

 

1. For many scientists networking is hard. It feels forced, it’s uncomfortable and it’s scary. No one is suggesting you should spend the entire time at the conference schmoozing up to PIs, but set yourself a target of talking to a couple of people each day whom you actually respect and know something about.
2. Before you go to a talk or conference, read some of the presenters’ work. Then after they have done their talk you can discuss it in more detail.
3. Think about some questions you can ask them about their work. If you can link the stuff in their talk back to their previous work you will make a very good impression.
4. At every conference you should submit to present at least a poster. It will encourage people to talk to you, get your name out there, and give you some practice at talking to people about science.

 
I got my post-doctoral position because a PI saw me give a talk at a conference. Before that she had never heard of me, but was sufficiently impressed to tell me about a position she had coming up. Going to conferences is always a good idea, but it is particularly beneficial when you are about to finish your degree.

 

1. Actively search for the courses and conferences you want to attend. Be proactive and email the organisers; you may find they are willing to help fund your travel, or waive the entry fee. Don’t wait to be told about things or you may miss out.
2. Courses teaching statistics and graphics programs are good ones to attend because they will be important for writing up your papers, theses, and dissertations; and learning them as you write up can be very stressful.
3. Your university probably has a list of approaching events. This is a great source of cheap and free activities so make sure you know where it is. Ask the administrative staff if you don’t know.
4. Don’t dismiss university emails as they may contain opportunities to do these courses.
5. Look for competitions for students and enter as many as you can. You can put them in the awards section of your CV.
6. If there is a procedure you are interested in learning, google it.
7. You could also email other labs and ask if you could do some work for them in order to learn new techniques, or find placements in labs the other side of the globe.
8. You can also do placements in industry. Some techniques which are too expensive to be done frequently in most labs are routine in industry. Ask around who has connections with industry and see if you can make contact, especially if your goal is to go into industry after you graduate.
9. If you are interested in industry and this is not your final degree, then you could look for a project with industry connections for your next one.

 
I had a great time with my degree, but I didn’t do much of this. It was only as I was finishing that a few of my younger friends started going all over the world. They went to Amsterdam, Japan, China, Croatia, Spain, America, and more, whilst I never left the country. Worse, most of these trips were completely free. If, like me, you are not a particularly organised person, it is really worth the extra effort to look into doing a few of these trips.

Aside from experiencing other places and things, these courses show potential employers that you are enthusiastic about learning and are active at pursuing it.

 

1. If someone else is presenting, then you should still read the paper. You won’t have time to analyse the figures properly during the presentation.
2. If your institute or group doesn’t have a journal club then set one up yourself. Send an email around asking who would like to be involved.
3. It’s generally better if there are a few people of more experience present who can point out inaccurate methods or invalid conclusions that students might not know.
4. When you are reading the article, look at the figures first, then conclude what the paper shows before reading the authors conclusion. You might be surprised at how different it is.
5. Sometimes if you have time you could look at a few reviews on the subject to see how the data ties in with other papers, especially if it is related to your own research.
6. At some points your life will be too busy for all these extra activities, but put off that moment for as long as possible as they really do help.

 

If there was one activity I would recommend to anyone, it’s journal club. Seeing the differences between the high and low impact papers and analysing them in detail helped me avoid the same mistakes and improved the quality of my research.

 

1. Make sure your presentation doesn’t go over time. Practise it repeatedly and make sure you keep within your allocation.
2. When you actually present it, nerves will make you talk faster than normal, so don’t worry if your talk goes slightly over time during practice.
3. Include a comprehensive introduction. Remember that many of these people will not know the details of your project, so if you want to hold their attention make sure you explain how everything works. It may mean you have to miss out a bit more data, but you can always state that if people want to hear about more of your data they can talk to you afterwards.
4. Practise the presentation for people outside your lab who don’t know much about your project, and ask what bits they didn’t understand. Then ask them questions about the bits they claimed to understand and see if they did.
5. Picture your audience in their underwear – just kidding.
6. NEVER picture a scientist in their underwear.

 
Most of the talks that I learnt nothing from had a similar format. They used one, or at the most two slides to introduce the fine details of their project which most people in the room had never heard of. The next slide was the first graph showing their results. At this point they lost me. It was impossible for me to care about their data because I didn’t understand its importance.

They needed a thorough introduction where they explained firstly the basics of the topic, and secondly the previous studies that led up to their work.

The more time you put into the introduction, the more the audience will care about your results.