Top 40 potential questions to be asked in a PhD viva or defense

Students worry about their vivas. They wonder whether they need to do additional work or read textbooks and articles again. For most students, they don’t need to do all this. My advice has consistently been the following to prepare for your viva: Pick up dissertation a few days before the viva, and read through it […]

Eloquent Science Workshops for Your Organization

I am delivering online and in-person workshops on scientific-communication skills designed specifically for your needs.

Chapter 24: Accessible Oral Presentations: Free to download

“Most of the time at conferences is spent listening to others talk. Given the over- whelming challenge for the audience to sit through, absorb, and remember mate- rial from all these presentations, a speaker must be memorable to connect with the audience. As the previous chapters focused on scientific writing, this chapter starts by distinguishing […]

Book review: Designing Science Presentations: A Visual Guide to Figures, Papers, Slides, Posters, and More

Here is another in my series of reviews for books that I read a while ago and were sitting on my desk waiting for the time to write the review. This review is of Matt Carter’s Designing Science Presentations: A Visual Guide to Figures, Papers, Slides, Posters, and More. Outside of my own book, I’ve […]

Is the university seminar dying?

When I reminisce about the educational experiences that most prepared me for a career in academia, attending the weekly seminar series was one of the more important influences. I had the opportunity to be exposed to such seminars at a number of different universities and research laboratories throughout my career, and they served similar purposes. […]

Improving communication skills through writing groups

Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): Later today and tomorrow, I’ll be talking to ClimateSnack‘s Mathew Reeve about improving communication skills for scientists. This got me thinking more about what ClimateSnack is trying to do. This graphic shows it well. It is about getting scientists to become better communicators with other scientists through short Climate Snack blog posts. […]

Speaker tips

Liveblog (Vienna, Austria): We’re four talks into the European Geosciences Union General Assembly (#EGU2014). Already we have seen how some speakers could improve their presentations. 1. Too many graphs on one slide that are spoken about too quickly, if they are spoken about at all. 2. Font sizes too small to be seen, even when […]

Can (and should) scientists become great presenters?

“When people like you [scientists & PhD students] talk about their research, half of the time even your peers don’t understand what the hell you are talking about, and when they do understand they find it boring. That’s the sad truth.” – Dr. Jean-luc Doumont From Presentation Zen blog by Garr Reynolds, forwarded to me […]

Junk the Jargon Interview on Public Engagement

An oldie, but goodie. Here is an interview (Junkcast) I did for the University of Manchester Junk the Jargon competition. I talk about my own experiences good and bad with public engagement, tips for connecting with the audience, and the origins of Eloquent Science.

A proposal for determining session chairs

Are you organizing a meeting? Here is a proposal that you might try to keep your meeting running smoothly. I got the idea from a brain teaser in a book that I read when I was a kid. The story goes like this. You are wanting to buy the slowest boat, so you place an […]

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