When you give a research presentation* (especially to a more general audience), you’re telling a story. And you’re the director and producer. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVMJYPLJdN4

*note: this advice is mostly for talks aimed mainly at a low-stakes talk to a more general general audience (e.g. a presentation for a summer research program). If you are giving a talk to specialists, you won’t need as much background and will likely need more specifics. 

WARNING: Please do not interpret any of this as sounding like I’m advocating for “cherrypicking” data (only using and showing results that support what you want findings to be, while ignoring contradictory data). Rather, everything you show should be representative (and hopefully replicated) findings. Just nothing extraneous (rather than nothing contradictory). You cannot misrepresent your work to your audience! But you can simplify it (as hard and painful as that might be when you’re an expert in the details and nuances. Do though, be careful not to oversell your findings. Rather, be forthcoming and explicit about your work’s limitations, need to replicate, etc. 

That out of the way, let’s get back to producing your story. Speaking of producing, you’ve surely produced a LOT of work. Much more than you’ll actually present. So you have to choose which things you want to present.

It can be really hard to not show stuff, when you (rightfully) think it’s all just oh so important and exciting. BUT, if you show oodles of stuff, the audience will be overwhelmed, not know what to focus on, and ultimately come away with *less* 

How to choose? Think back to the whole story idea – what findings are the most important for helping you tell your story? Try to find a graph or other figure of data that shows each of those points, then shape your slides around them. 

Come up with a draft outline of your talk and slides. Keep the following things in mind:

• Title slide
  • The title can be more “fun” and less technical than the title of a paper for a technical journal or something
  • Include your name, your lab head (PI)’s name, and the date
  • May want to include school/institute logo

• Intro
  • Big picture relevance: Why should they care?
    • Start by getting the audience interested (and hopefully amping up your own personal excitement level – the more passion you can show towards your research, the more engaging your talk will be and it will excite the audience as well)
  • Background:
    • Give as much (and only as much) background as the audience needs to understand your talk and your work’s relevance
    • Too much background can be a bad thing, overwhelming your audience before you even get to your work – it also makes it hard for them to know what is important (and thus what to try to retain), so they just “give up”
    • You can also introduce bits of background as needed throughout the talk. This is a great strategy to not overwhelm the audience and to also give them relevant information at the point at which it’s actually relevant, rather than needing them to remember it
    • Be sure to cite your sources (including for any figures you use but didn’t make yourself)
  • Overall goal
    • Before transitioning from background into your work, drive home the overall goal of your project (which the audience should now have the necessary background to understand)

• Results
  • Present as much, but only as much, as you need to tell your story
    • Remember, don’t try to cram too much in! Your goal is not to impress your audience by how much you’ve done. Rather, it’s to impress upon them the gist of what you’ve accomplished and what it means.
    • You don’t have to go in chronological order! Often, when you’re doing research, you are doing lots of things in parallel, finding things that make you go back and change strategies or perform additional experiments, etc. It can be hard for you personally to keep track of things (so hopefully you’re keeping a lab log to help). But it’s even more difficult for your audience! Thankfully, your audience doesn’t need to know what you did first, second, etc. Rather, it will be easier for them to follow along if you tell things in a logical order
  • Let figures (graphs, pictures, charts) tell thousands of words
    • But do make sure your figures have sufficient words (cough. . . label your axes, including units . . . cough)
      • Remember that the audience doesn’t know your abbreviations, etc. and they can’t read your mind. So be sure to label things with sufficient information for a non-you or even just a non-expert to understand.
        • Run through your slides with friends and/or peers who are not in your lab in order to make sure you’re not using any “insider” words
  • Minimize the amount of text. Instead, walk the audience through the figures.
    • But still give the daydreamers and multitaskers something to latch onto! Some people have different preferences, but I like to state the main finding/take away for the slide in the title of the slide. This way, you limit text, but give the audience something to take away and catch up with even if they zone out for a minute and miss the explanation
  • Embrace the empty space – it’s really okay!
  • Unlike in a research article, where results and discussion are separate, with a talk, you should discuss the relevance of each finding to your overall goal as you present the finding (before moving on to the next)
    • Help the audience keep the big picture in mind, with each piece of data you show
      • In some cases, you might be able to use a little infographic in the corner to orient the audience to what aspect of the project the slide corresponds to.
        • For example, if you’re studying a complex of two proteins, you might want to include a little icon with 2 proteins in the corner and circle or highlight the relevant one

• Conclusion
  • Now that you’ve shown your findings, and discussed their individual relevance to your overall goal, put the findings all together, emphasizing how each adds a different piece to the puzzle
    • Note: If you can’t see how they interrelate and/or if you have multiple of the “same” puzzle piece, reconsider what data you’re including. You may want to take something out
  • Also, put your findings back into the broader context 
  • I recommend having brief bullet points with the major findings (similar to the slide titles)

• Outstanding questions & future directions
  • What information are you still needing?
  • What new questions did your results raise?
  • What are you continuing to work on or what would you continue to work on if you were to continue the work?
    • You can “propose” things even if you don’t have the equipment or money to actually do. So feel free to be creative!

• Acknowledgments
  • Thank your lab (PI & lab mates)
    • Often you’ll include a lab photo
  • Thank any collaborators
  • Thank anyone who provided significant help (through resources, discussions, etc.)
  • Thank your source of funding!!! (institutional, grant, etc.) 
  • Thank your audience
  • May want to include school/institute logo

Typically, after your talk, there will be time for Q & A. Take your time when answering, and know it’s okay not to know! Just say something like “That’s an interesting question. I will have to look into it and get back to you” or something. (Chances are, they’ll forget what they asked by the time you actually get back to them, but maybe you’ll find something cool thanks to their question!).

Practice your talk, especially for timing, but be careful not to sound scripted. Here’s where that getting yourself and your audience excited can help. The more into your project and animated you are, the easier things will hopefully flow, and you’ll find you don’t need notecards! Whatever you do, try to avoid as much as you can reading text off your slides.

Know that giving talks is hard. For some, harder than others. It takes time, experience, and practice. But it gets easier! Sometimes, the scariest part is just not knowing where to start. So hope this helped a bit!

Downloadable PDF: https://bit.ly/talktipspdf 

More downloadable resources: https://bit.ly/bumbling_uploads