Giving a Talk

1
Giving a Talk

• Dr Alan Wheals
• University of Bath
• October 31st 2007

2
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely
- Edward Tufte
3
Topics

• Introduction
• Types of talks
• Audience
• Speaking
• Slide content
• Standard Plan
• PPT Practicalities
• Fonts, Figures, Tables, Style
• Finishing

4
Introduction

• It is an essential skill for professionals
• Few of us are natural public speakers
• I will talk about things to avoid
• Practice makes perfect
• You need to be able to tell a story
• For scientists, content is always more important
  than style, BUT
• Poor style and presentation may obscure content

5
Types of talks you may give

• Seminar (assessed for MRes)
• Project talk (assessed for MRes)
• PhD progress report
• PhD interview (as part of a)
• Post-Doc interview (as part of a)
• Conference talk
• Faculty position talk

6
Other types of talks you may give

• School (eg as an alumnus/a)
• A non-Science department here
• Job Interview Panel
• Public
• Funding body

7
Know your audience

• Adjust content for every occasion
• BBSRC require a research project summary
  intelligible to a 14-year old
• Outreach justifies expenditure on Science
• Science Café
• Researcher in Residence
• Elevator Pitch?
• Can you explain your research topic in one
  minute?
• Try it on the adjacent person and vice versa
• For the receiver was the talk good OK not so
  good?

8
Speaking 1

• Coping with nerves
• Rehearse until you are confident
• Concentrate on your story
• Check up on any weak bits
• Read from slide? Boring
• Read from notes/cards? Less boring
• Use slide as a reminder and explain in your own
  words. Best
• Keep to time. You may get cut!
• Less is more. Concentrate on essentials

9
Speaking 2

• Slowly
• Talks with audiences go faster (panic)
• Clearly
• Enunciate (most of the audience might be
  non-native speakers)
• Breathing
• Ends of sentences
• Eye contact
• Volume
• Use a microphone if available
• If a radio-mike, where does it go?

10
Highlighting

• Pointer
• Hand?
• Laser
• Stick
• Mouse
• Visible all the time
• Drawing
• Mouse options on Control Panel
• Arrow size or alternatives
• Trails

11
Slide content

• The audience needs time to
• read the words
• understand the figures and tables
• interpret the slide
• You must explain the slide and not expect the
  audience to work it out
• Figures can contain a complex story but you must
  tell it

Sample size? What is an adult? When was time
zero (or one)?
http//www.prcdc.org/summaries/aidsinafrica/aidsin
africa.html
12
Slide content

• Check out the venue (or screen) size
• Some professional societies recommend no more
  than 6 text lines
• Do not overload the slide
• It is usual to make only one point per slide
• One slide per minute would be an absolute upper
  limit and half that would be more common
• Movies are great but ensure that the software is
  on the computer or your flashdrive

13
Standard Plan

• Plan of talk
• Introduction/background
• What you were trying to do the problem
• Why you were trying to do it - importance
• How you did it methods / approach
• What did you discover - results
• Say how important it was conclusions
• Where you go next future work
• Thanks (acknowledgments) to people and funders

14
Practicalities

• A talk is different from a report or poster
• Dont just paste from Word
• Use animation (appropriately)
• Learn from others (good and bad)
• Focus on the essentials
• Edit large tables down to key points
• Use diagrams (that can be borrowed from the
  internet, with attribution)
• Use the whole slide
• Use slide numbers to know where you are

15
Slide set-up

• Master slide
• View (Master then Slide master)
• Background, font style, colour, size
• Logo
• Colour schemes
• Design templates

16
Fonts type and size

• Times New Roman 24 20 16 12 8
• Verdana 24 20 16 12 8
• Arial 24 20 16 12 8
• Tahoma 24 20 16 12 8
• Comic sans MS 24 20 16 12 8
• Lucida Sans 24 20 16 12 8
• Dont mix fonts
• Use sans serif
• Use the Master slide

17
Fonts type and size

• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• A quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs
• All 26 font

18
Colour

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Indigo
• Violet
• White

19
Colour

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green
• Blue
• Indigo
• Violet
• White

20
Colour

• Red
• Orange
• Yellow
• Green Blue
• Indigo
• Violet
• White

21
Colour

• Calm colours are best
• One colour is best
• Do not overuse
• and its impact will be greater
• Do not use templates
• Use logos sparingly
• Colours will vary with location set up
• Use distinct primary colours

22
Acknowledgements

• Thanks cost nothing
• The lab
• Supervisors
• Sponsors
• (University of Bath for funding)
• My mother without whom

23
Some examples to criticise!
24
Average OTA uptake in ng/day, MPP, 50th
percentile (mean case)(Wolff et al., 1999)
25

• The history of the motor car
• 1920-1929
• Henry Ford

26
Wild Strains - O2 Results

• Effect of medium pH

27
Phylogeny

• Tree based on sequences of rDNA cistrons,
  particularly the D1-D2 region of the Intergenic
  Transcribed Spacer (ITS)

28
The prion protein

• 25kDa Protein
• First isolated in 1982
• Consists of several domains

Toxic domain
1 23 51 90
254
Octameric repeats
Copper Binding
GPI Anchor
Signal Peptide
29
Cell Tracking

37 hours/30min IN Cell Analyzer 1000 37C/5 CO2
30
Cell tracking
time
31
History of opium II

• In 16th century, addiction and withdrawal
  symptoms were reported
• Godfreys cordial
• In mid18th century ?opium war between China and
  western countries.

32
Background

• Shigella spp. are a specialised clade of E.coli
  responsible for shigellosis in humans, a disease
  characterized by the destruction of colonic
  mucosa induced upon bacterial invasion
• Homologous genes from closely related organisms
  such as E.coli allow an examination of the
  mechanisms of evolution (Fukushima et al. 2002)
• The rate of nucleotide modification through
  synonymous changes allows us to compare closely
  related species
• Evolution at silent sites has been used to
  estimate the rate of selectively neutral
  processes inferring differences and relationships
  in divergence times of genes and genomes allowing
  the investigation of specific mutational
  modifications
• In addition to codon and gene specific effects on
  synonymous site substitution rates, genes located
  near the origin of replication undergo a lower
  rate of substitution than genes situated closer
  to the terminus
• Marais (2003) suggested that the main cause is an
  increase in rates of transitions and
  transversions

33
GC Enrichment

• All data is normalised for codon preferences
  (substitution type / total number of substitution
  bases available) and for differences between
  windows e.g. base composition length (each sub
  type / total subs for that window)
• Allows better direct comparison between different
  species
• Any score greater than 1 is GC enriching and any
  score less than 1 is AT enriching

34
Staphylocuccus aureusA Super Bug

• Reduction in S. aureus infections a priority in
  NHS hospitals
• Considerable efforts in infection control
• Washing hands is probably not enough
• Alcogel used in hand washing may be exacerbating
  the spread of Clostridium difficile

35
Infection associated?
total IgG

• 11 antigens tested

• 9/11 infection associated

36
Introduction Lipid transfer proteins

• Bind and transfer lipids in vitro
• For a few there is evidence for in vivo transfer
• Distinct lipid transfer proteins with different
  lipid affinity
• One family of lipid-
• transfer protein StAR-
• related lipid transfer
• (START) domain
• protein

Alpy, F. et al., J. Cell Sci. 2005 1182791-2801
37
(No Transcript)
38
Finally

• Take your PPT in multiple formats
• Will the audience remember anything?
• Will the audience remember your name?
• Will you be invited to speak elsewhere?
• Your career may be influenced by it!

39
Thanks for listening