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Issue 1, July 2002
Thoughts on Presenting a Poster: Science, Sun, and Sea World at the 2002 Spring American Chemical Society Meeting
Katie Lovejoy
Integrated Science, Northwestern University
lovejoy@jyi.org
Saturday,
April 6th, 10 p.m.: The six travelers check into an Orlando
hotel. We're undergraduates from Northwestern University and we're
here, not for Disney World, but to present posters on our research
to the American Chemical Society. Our business attire contrasts sharply
at breakfast with the Mickey Mouse ears of the other hotel guests.
Today, we opt for the intellectual excitement of displaying our research
work in front of a professional audience. We expect the poster presentations
we will make in Orlando to affect our futures.
"Anyone who presents an undergraduate poster at the ACS meeting is
someone we want to recruit for graduate school," says Owen Priest,
a faculty member of Northwestern University. Since all six of us in
the group want to go to graduate school, his words hit home. Additionally,
we undergrads will gain valuable practice in presenting and defending
our work to a critical scientific audience and will have the opportunity
to meet other scientists who share our research interests. Certainly,
the opportunity to present a poster at a scientific meeting is a valuable
one. What steps did we take to ensure that we would get the most out
of this opportunity?
Our work started months earlier, when we submitted abstracts for the
meeting and secured funding for travel expenses. Host universities
- the institutions where we each did our research - paid most student
expenses. Many universities offer such grants to students who wish
to present at scientific meetings. If you worked in the summer for
a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates
(NSF REU) program, you may be able to get a small amount of funding
from them, as well.
You'll need at least a week to work on your poster. Initially, you
must decide if you want a one-sheet poster or a poster composed of
many small sheets. A one-sheet poster is quick and easy to set up
before the poster session. At the ACS meeting, the student next to
me put up his poster in less than five minutes with four pushpins,
while I struggled for 20 minutes to perfectly align 12 sheets on my
display space. One the other hand, a one-sheet poster is awkward to
bring on a plane. One of the students in our group used a fishing
pole tube to bring hers to Florida. Also, when you create a one-sheet
poster, you need to make sure it will fit the allotted space. Posters
that hung over the edges of the displays looked sloppy and posters
too small for the display wasted valuable space. Additionally, a one-sheet
poster must be reprinted every time you want to add data to it or
make changes.
There are several advantages to a poster composed of many separate
sheets. For one, you can print on the paper of your choice. Many of
the most attractive posters used glossy paper or paper with colorful
(but muted) backgrounds. Also, a multi-sheet poster allows for flexibility.
I made my poster using Microsoft's PowerPoint, which allowed
me to easily insert slides made by other members of my research group.
Upon my return, my professor and other group members could use my
slides in their own presentations. In addition, I converted the same
slides into an oral PowerPoint presentation two days after the ACS
meeting. One drawback of the multi-sheet format is that the white
sheets can't just be tacked to the background, or the poster looks
sloppy. Backing the white sheets with a bit of colored paper makes
the poster look more polished.
When creating the content of the poster, put your text in large letters
and in bulleted points. Tell as much of your story as possible through
pictures. Text and titles should be big enough so a person can read
them from a distance, and the main title should be as large as possible.
The title is what people look at as they decide whether to stop at
your poster or to keep walking, so make it big. Demonstrating that
your work is novel is especially important at an undergraduate poster
session, where you will draw more attention to your research.
The basic sections should be an introduction, which can be several
slides long if you have helpful, descriptive graphics, a description
of your methods, a summary of your results, and your conclusions.
A section listing new research questions raised by your work will
demonstrate your thought about the implications of your results and
that you have a plan for the future of your project. Always include
acknowledgements and funding sources at the end of your poster. Mention
the other members of your research group, and any people who shared
their time or equipment with you.
When you present your poster, bring along your own supply of pushpins.
Chances are that either the pushpins provided by the meeting will
be too short to hold your poster up, or that the meeting will run
out of them. I brought some 1" long map flags (Acco Map Flags, stock
#72197), which are about two times the length of regular pushpins.
After putting months or years of work into your research and weeks
of work into your poster, the last thing you want is for your poster
to be ruined because of bad pushpins!
You'll want to mentally prepare yourself for the poster session. Before
the session starts, prepare about a two minute summary of your poster
for the person who comes up and says, "So... what's this all about?"
Be sure to practice it out loud before the session. Also, prepare
a handful of cards with your name, institution, project title, and
email address to hand out to people who want more information about
your work. Use business card stock paper for these cards.
Once the poster session starts, make eye contact with people who seem
interested in your poster, and encourage people to ask questions.
Your goal is to gain experience presenting your work to a critical
scientific audience. If you stand like a statue in front of your poster
and avoid eye contact, you're missing out on the experience.
Even after you've packed up for the day, you have one crucial task
left: Be sure to write thank-you notes to whoever paid your way. After
the poster session, our group of student researchers went to dinner
and talked about the conversations we had and the things we learned.
Poster presentations are special because the presenter can speak with
a small group of interested people. While oral presentations may be
more glamorous and get a higher billing in the meeting program, they
lack the opportunity for the in-depth discussions possible at a poster
session.
Suggested Reading
The University at Buffalo's Science and Engineering Library has an extensive
website on designing effective poster presentations.
It includes sample posters, links to other online resources, and an extensive list of books with poster-making advice.
The University of Kansas Medical Center has created an
online tutorial with guidelines for making effective presentations.
Oral, poster, and paper presentations are all included. The link to a web page on "How to Give a Bad Talk" is also of interest.
Journal of Young
Investigators. 2002. Volume Six.
Copyright © 2002 by Katie Lovejoy and JYI. All rights reserved.
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