Doing Science: Chairing sessions (original) (raw)

Science conference poster presentations in an ESP program

The ESP journal, 1984

In recent years at professional conferences poster presentations have become a popular technique for communicating ideas, especially research work. Sanderson (1982) has described in great detail how posters are professionally made and used in biomedical meetings. In this paper is a description of how such posters have been adapted to an intensive ESP program in Beijing, People's Republic of China, to simulate conference conditions; to provide coordination between the writing and oral communication courses at the advanced level; to provide informal, unplanned discussion concerning the students' own research interests; and to provide students (who might be attending professional conferences where English is one of the conference languages) with a technique for communicating ideas that is less threatening than a formal conference presentation in front of many people. * The use of poster presentations which is described here is one of several techniques first presented by van Naerssen and Jiang at the TESOL convention in Honolulu, May 1982. (See van Naerssen and Jiang 1982.

Designing Scientific Meetings

Science, 2013

THIS ISSUE OF SCIENCE CONTAINS ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR MORE THAN 100 DIFFERENT GORDON Research Conferences, on topics that range from atomic physics to developmental biology. The brainchild of Neil Gordon of Johns Hopkins University, these week-long meetings are designed to promote intimate, informal discussions of frontier science. Often confi ned to fewer than 125 attendees, they have traditionally been held in remote places with minimal distractions. Beginning in the early 1960s, I attended the summer Nucleic Acids Gordon Conference in rural New Hampshire, sharing austere dorm facilities in a private boys' school with randomly assigned roommates. As a beginning scientist, I found the question period after each talk especially fascinating, providing valuable insights into the personalities and ways of thinking of many senior scientists whom I had not encountered previously. Back then, there were no cellphones and no Internet, and all of the speakers seemed to stay for the entire week. During the long, session-free afternoons, graduate students mingled freely with professors. Many lifelong friendships were begun, andas Gordon intended-new scientifi c collaborations began. Leap forward to today, and every scientist can gain immediate access to a vast store of scientifi c thought and to millions of other scientists via the Internet. Why, nevertheless, do in-person scientifi c meetings remain so valuable for a life in science? Part of the answer is that science works best when there is a deep mutual trust and understanding between the collaborators, which is hard to develop from a distance. But most important is the critical role that face-to-face scientifi c meetings play in stimulating a random collision of ideas and approaches. The best new science occurs when someone combines the knowledge gained by other scientists in non-obvious ways to create a new understanding of how the world works. A successful scientist needs to deeply believe, whatever the problem being tackled, that there is always a better way to approach that problem than the path currently being taken. The scientist is then constantly on the alert for new paths to take in his or her work, which is essential for making breakthroughs. Thus, as much as possible, scientifi c meetings should be designed to expose the attendees to ways of thinking and techniques that are different from the ones that they already know. There is a danger of scientifi c meetings becoming overly specialized as the amount of scientifi c knowledge expands. There is no longer a Gordon Conference called Nucleic Acids; understandably, it was replaced long ago by a whole set of meetings on related subspecialties. But I would argue that one should try to avoid producing a scientifi c meeting where all of the attendees use the same approaches and read the same scientifi c literature. In fact, the most stimulating scientifi c meetings that I have attended have taken the extreme opposite approach, intentionally mixing scientists with very different backgrounds and interests, convening them to produce a set of new ideas for attacking a challenging scientifi c puzzle. One example of such a meeting was an intensive 2-day 1995 workshop on schizophrenia that involved 18 carefully selected scientists, most of whom knew almost nothing about the disease. The meeting began with a few invited experts presenting what was known about schizophrenia to the non-experts, answering their many questions in informal discussions around a large square table. All of the remaining time was spent in brainstorming about possible new approaches to understanding the cellular basis for the disease and discovering better treatments. In the process, we all learned a great deal of new science, and we produced a report with valuable new ideas.* This simply could not have happened via e-mail or Skype. A second, larger example is the Keck Futures Initiative, convened annually by the U.S. National Academies. Could more meetings of this type play a powerful role in accelerating the scientifi c innovation needed to address the world's many new challenges?

Doing science: Preparing a poster

2013

Starting a scientific career means learning a wide range of new skills. Often you do them as best you can and try to learn in a trial and error basis how to do better next time. This "Doing Science" section is a joint initiative of Breathe and the ERS Junior Members' Committee (JMC) and will address common tasks that scientists and clinicians are faced with early in their careers. The topics we will cover (e.g. poster presentation, chairing sessions, reviewing papers, etc.) are not exclusive to Junior Members but are often relevant to members of all levels of academic experience; so, we hope that there may be something here for everyone.

Tips for effective poster presentations

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry, 2006

This editorial is a follow-up of an earlier article (E. Bulska 'Good oral presentation of scientific work' Anal Bioanal Chem 385:403-405) on strategies for effective oral communication. The previous discussion highlighted some of the differences in communicating results via formal written manuscripts and oral conference presentations. A scientific poster presentation is in many ways a hybrid format, sharing similarities with both journal manuscripts and research talks.

Visual Communication: A Preparatory Guide for Using Posters as a Medium for Scientific Dialogue

Poster presentations are an effective method of conveying scientific information in an interactive and nonthreatening format. They are also a means of increasing authors' visibility and recognition in their field. The authors have presented a preparatory guide to minimize stress and increase poster presentation savvy at professional conferences for either the novice or seasoned professional.