Kirsty the Scientist

A few weeks ago,  I completed my last assessed piece of work before my final exams - a 10 minute presentation on my dissertation research, followed by 5-10 minutes of questions.  And as part of this session I also listened to 15 other students' presentations.  As someone who is fascinated by science communication, I was really excited to explore how to change  But it was hard work. M y main goal was to engage my audience of peers, making sure they could grasp my specific (and pretty niche) subject in just a few minutes. For me, by supporting all this information (which is new and possibly confusing to my audience) with a key story. Why this research means something - essentially why they should listen/care about what I was telling them.  But when I watched my peers, this story link was the key thing I thought was missing from all of their talks - why I should be listening? Why their piece of research helped to fill a gap in the knowledge we have in that fi...

Today was the first research group seminar since my group and the three other linked groups move labs. It was a really inspiring hour, with talks from three students at different stages of their PhDs, talking about their findings and results so far and their hopes and aims for their project. Each speaker had quite a different subject area which made the talks interesting and varied.  I definitely picked up a few tips for my presentation at the end of my project!

Between parts of experiments today, we had a research meeting to discuss all the results I've gathered so far and explain what I've been up to to both of my supervisors, the research associates looking after me and the new masters student. Which all meant I was asked to present all my results, slightly unprepared, to everyone in the room! Good practice for when I'll have to do an assessed presentation at the end of this module. It was a little bit scary, but all worthwhile.