Introduction:
My experience in presenting at a conference is that of an undergraduate presenting a poster. My first presentation was at NCUR 2023, and my second time will be at NCUR 2024. Regardless of the medium in which you are presenting, it all starts with good research. For undergrads it can be hard to talk about the research you’re doing as your grasp of the subject is not as advanced or complete. By making proper use of your lab notebook, writing out procedures, detailed notes on reaction progress, and any interesting observations, you can reference back to these notes when adding them to a poster or PowerPoint.
Making a poster:
I had a lot of difficulty working on my first… and also my second poster. While there wasn’t as much material to include on my first poster, I still found myself struggling, this was my first proper science poster after all. It was difficult to know what to include. So, I started with the only two places I had a full grasp on, the introduction and future directions. The introduction let me set the stage for the body of information that would be included later while the future directions section was the natural end of the research I had done. Essentially taking two slices of bread to then fill between. With some guidance from my research mentor, we came up with several ideas for what should be in the body of the poster. Including things like, a general reaction scheme, spectroscopy data, and some graphs to represent yield data. People love to see pictures, especially of colorful reactions. It also helps people visualize what your research is about, and it breaks up the information overload that posters can become. Early on when I first joined the lab something that was suggested to me by my research mentor was to take pictures of my work when and where I could as they made great additions to a presentation. Once everything from the introduction, body and future directions is done the conclusion becomes fairly straightforward. It acts as the bridge that connects the beginning of the poster to the end, describing what the information you included means and providing a segue into where the research is going next.
Presenting the poster:
The final challenge of a poster presentation is actually presenting a poster. This can be made even more difficult at a conference where the focus is not on any particular field. Meaning the people you are presenting to have a wildly varying understanding of what you are talking about. It can be helpful to practice giving your presentation to people within the field and outside of it to make sure you have a solid grasp on what it is you are talking about. Remember this is your research and you are the expert.
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