Advice for first year PhD presentations

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Advice for first year PhD presentations

• R J Cernik

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This is just advice

• Do it your way

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BasicsIf nothing else your talk should leave the
listeners with the following information

• Who are you?
• What are you doing?
• Why did you do it?
• How did you do it?
• Results what did you find out?
• Conclusions so what?

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Who are you?

• Brief introduction
• Describe the group you are working with
• What are the groups aims?
• This should be very brief, less than 1 minute
• Hint, you can show all this with one slide and
  refer to it in a flash

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C. Caso, G. Conforto, A. Gurtu, M.
Aguilar-Benitez, C. Amsler, R.Michael Barnett,
P.R. Burchat, C.D. Carone, O. Dahl, M. Doser, S.
Eidelman, J.L. Feng, M. Goodman, C. Grab, D.E.
Groom, K. Hagiwara, K.G. Hayes, J.J. Hernandez,
K. Hikasa, K. Honscheid, F. James, Michelangelo
L. Mangano, A.V. Manohar, K. Monig, H. Murayama,
K. Nakamura, Keith A. Olive, A. Piepke, M. Roos,
R.H. Schindler, R.E. Shrock, M. Tanabashi, N.A.
Tornqvist, T.G. Trippe, P. Vogel, C.G. Wohl, R.L.
Workman, B. Armstrong, J.L. Casas Serradilla,
B.B. Filimonov, P.S. Gee, S.B. Lugovsky, S.
Mankov, F. Nicholson, K.S. Babu, D. Besson, O.
Biebel, R.N. Cahn, R.L. Crawford, R.H. Dalitz, T.
Damour, K. Desler, R.J. Donahue, D.A. Edwards, J.
Erler, V.V. Ezhela, A. Fasso, W. Fetscher, D.
Froidevaux, T.K. Gaisser, L. Garren, S. Geer,
H.J. Gerber, F.J. Gilman, H.E. Haber, C. Hagmann,
I. Hinchliffe, C.J. Hogan, G. Hohler, J.D.
Jackson, K.F. Johnson, D. Karlen, B. Kayser, K.
Kleinknecht, I.G. Knowles, Christopher F. Kolda,
P.A. Kreitz, P. Langacker, R. Landua, L.
Littenberg, D.M. Manley, J. March-Russell, T.
Nakada, Helen R. Quinn, G. Raffelt, B. Renk, M.T.
Ronan, L.J. Rosenberg, M. Schmitt, D.N. Schramm,
D. Scott, T. Sjostrand, G.F. Smoot, S. Spanier,
M. Srednicki, T. Stanev, M. Suzuki, N.P.
Tkachenko, G. Valencia, K. van Bibber, R. Voss,
L. Wolfenstein, S. Youssef CERN LBL, Berkeley
Genoa U. INFN, Genoa Urbino U. INFN,
Florence Tata Inst. Madrid, CIEMAT Zurich
U. Stanford U., Phys. Dept. William-Mary
Coll. Novosibirsk, IYF UC, Berkeley Argonne
Zurich, ETH KEK, Tsukuba Hillsdale Coll.
Valencia U. Tohoku U. Ohio State U. UC, San
Diego Minnesota U. Caltech, Kellogg Lab
Helsinki U. SLAC SUNY, Stony Brook Virginia
Tech. Serpukhov, IHEP (103 authors listed)
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What are you doing?

• Very generally introduce the context of the
  problem
• Explain your role in the work and its relevance
  to the problem

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Why are you dong this work?

• Why is this research important?
• Where is it going?
• Why should I care?
• So what?

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How?

• What methods have you chosen?
• Why these?
• Were there any others that were suitable?
• How are you undertaking this work?

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Results

• Have you got any results?
• If so, describe them briefly
• Dont go overboard with the detail
• Very often the reasons for null results are more
  interesting that routine measurements.
• You might have a short time to say what you are
  going to do next

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Questions

• Remember the audience are composed mainly from
  your fellow students.
• If you have dived in with too much detail they
  will not have a chance to ask sensible questions
• This is your chance to extract some really
  constructive advice from your peers and academic
  staff present
• This is potentially the part of the presentation
  where you will get the maximum feedback. Dont
  talk over this five minute period.

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General advice

• Relax, this exercise is designed to exchange
  information with your fellow students and members
  of staff.
• It will help you with your research by clarifying
  your ideas and suggesting possibilities for
  future directions.
• It is not a test, there are no pass or fail
  marks.
• Practice your talk in from of a willing
  volunteer. Bribe them if necessary. Its better if
  they are not a material scientist.
• Your talk needs to be understood by non
  specialists
• Limit the number of slides to absolutely no more
  than one per minute

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Example of a complicated diagram, this takes a
long time to work out what is going on (Eichhorn
et al J Mat Chem 2006)
Figure 5 Compressive stress as determined by
synchrotron x-ray diffraction methods on the
(002), (012), (113) and (231) reflections as a
function of depth penetration.
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Same diagram with better labels and no caption.
Much easier to understand. Get quickly to the
point