Introduce yourself! Be sure to tell your audiences who you are and what your role is at Princeton University.

• "Hi. This is Science News with Emily Cruz. And today, we will be talking about how financial institutions can help or hurt our transition to net-zero and the global aim to mitigate the more serious repercussions of global climate change." (Emily Alexander Cruz, “Modeling the Carbon Emissions of Financial Institutions,” PRD 2022)
• “My name is Joyce Wei-Jo Chen, and I’m a native of Taiwan. I’m currently a doctorate candidate in the Department of Music and Interdisciplinary Humanities. Today, I would like to share with you the core of my dissertation, titled “MusicaExperimentia/Experimentum, which investigates how our experience of music and understanding of sound are interrelated by three aspects; acoustics, aesthetics, and artisanal knowledge.” (Joyce Wei-Jo Chen, “Musical Experience/Experiment through Making a Harpsichord,” (PRD 2022)

One of the most exciting aspects of PRD is introducing your work to an audience who may have never encountered this research or creative practice before. How would you introduce your work to someone who has limited or no understanding of your topic? How will you reach as wide an audience as possible while still demonstrating the richness of your project? 

Consider: What is the essential context? What are your key terms? Why is this work so important? It’s likely you won’t be able to cover everything about your project - focus on one or two of the most exciting parts that speak to why a broad audience should be just as enthusiastic as you are about the project.

• "I’m here to tell you the incredible story of nature’s tiniest soda. This is a single-celled algae, and this is a plant, one of the algae’s distant cousins. Even though the algae is much smaller than the plant, and half a billion years diverged by evolution, they actually have a lot of similarities…Only the algae though have a pyrenoid, or what we like to call ‘nature’s tiniest soda.’" (Eric Franklin and Guanhua He, “How Nature’s Tiniest Soda Could Help Feed the World: The Story of the Algal Pyrenoid,” PRD 2022)

How has your project taken shape, and how have you carried it forward? Be sure to articulate your methods to viewers outside of your field who may have never set foot into a science lab, done a close reading of a text like the one you’re discussing, been to the part of the world you’re studying, or ever thought about art in the way you’re performing or presenting it. You might ask yourself: How do I give my audience the tools to understand my motives for approaching my project in the way that I have?

• "In my exploration of the augmented undercommons, I study three attempts at liberatory technology. I analyzed how these systems differ from their predecessors while considering the ways in which they replicate existing societal flaws. A color-changing biometric hoodie, an augmented reality garden full of mourning flowers, and an algorithm that allows you to post to social media while hiding from facial recognition software." (Payton Croskey, “The Augmented Undercommons and The Path to The Sun: An Exploration of Liberatory Technology and other Revolutionary Tools,” PRD 2022)

Why should audiences care about your project? Why do YOU care about your work? The last thing you want is for your audiences to be left wondering what the point of your presentation was, or what’s at stake in any of it. If you submit an art piece or performance, you must also discuss the scholarship behind it. This presentation is not only a chance for you to lay out what you’ve done and how you’ve done it, but also to demonstrate concisely what it brings to the table within and beyond your field. Remember, you’re speaking to a general audience, so try to think about your work’s applicability in a relatively broad sense.

• "The world’s oceans are our most critical resource. But what you can’t see from above the surface is that our living coral reefs are slowly dying. Many factors such as warming ocean temperatures, ocean acidification, and fishing and diving industries are putting pressure on the few living reefs that remain, causing irreputable harm to marine ecosystems." (Grace K. Barbara, "From Bare to Brilliant: The Migration of Fish Species to a Newly Deployed Artificial Coral Reef in Delray Beach, FL," PRD 2022)

Remember, this is only THREE MINUTES. Think carefully about how much time you’ll allot for each of the four categories above. Think of this presentation as a window, a brief glimpse into what makes your work exciting and fun. Focus on a small enough slice so that you can dig into how nuanced and interesting your project is. 

For more tips, check out these workshops:

• Crafting and Sharing Your Research Story
• Clearly Communicating Complex Concepts
• Simple-Language Science: Make Your Scientific Story Engaging and Accessible

If you’re excited about your work and what it contributes to the world, it will be to your presentation’s benefit. Present with energy! Practice your presentation several times, and experiment with different cadences, different audiences (if you can), and different styles. See what works for you, and whatever it is, get us excited about it!

For more tips, check out these workshops:

• After the Research: Presenting with Clarity and Enthusiasm
• Connection, Not Perfection: An Introduction to Public Speaking

Think about ways that you can make your presentation memorable not just in its contents but also in how you present them.

For more tips, check out this workshop:

• Visualizing Your Ideas