Giving a Poster/Paper

[Rae Nishi]

Just a few more points to add to the excellent ones already made:

In the intro of your poster or talk, outline the general biological
context of your study.  DON'T PLUNGE RIGHT INTO YOUR EXPERIMENTS (eg.,
I have heard talks from students who say their lab is working on
transporters, then they plunge right into their transporter data,
leaving me to wonder why this specific transporter is so interesting to
study).  Make sure that the knowledgeble non-expert can understand why
you are asking these questions.  State the hypothesis you are testing
and how your experiments will test it.  At the end of your talk or
poster have a slide or figure that succinctly states the conclusions of
your study.  Minimize text by creating lists.

When you have graphs of data to show, label the lines or points on the
figure.  Don't leave one to search the figure legend or wait for the
speaker to give the key.  One should be able to understand the figure
by looking at it.  Explain acronyms or avoid them entirely (commonly
used acronyms are OK but don't create new acronyms for terms or
procedures that can be explained in plain English).  Avoid jargon.

reply to nishir at ohsu.edu
Rae Nishi, PhD
Professor
Dept. Cell & Developmental Biology
Oregon Health Sciences University
Portland Oregon