Materials Science and Engineering Calendar

When teaching a student to deliver a presentation at a conference or job interview, we focus on some basic fundamentals: clear fonts, readable figures, and practiced timing. While functional and universal, these rules alone rarely make a talk stand out from any other. A forgettable talk means that your hard work in research may be missed, they give the job to another candidate, or a potential client chooses someone else.

This talk pivots from the basic rules to help make your talks more impactful. We will develop skills in the 3 key areas of a professional talk: organization, content, and delivery. For organization, we will employ learning objectives that are typically found in pedagogical settings. The use of learning objectives will help us to break down complex processes and data into the critical components that the audience needs. To improve your content, we will look at figure choice and formatting to ensure that the entire audience can clearly follow your data. Finally, we will cover some basic nonverbal communication techniques so that you understand everything you are telling the audience and what they are telling you. By including some of these non-standard rules, you will elevate your presentations and are more likely to stand out among your peers.