20.109(S08):Module 3 oral presentations - OpenWetWare
20.109(S08):Module 3 oral presentations
Writing a research proposal requires that you identify an interesting topic, spend lots of time learning about it, and then design some clever experiments to advance the field. It also requires that you articulate your ideas so any reader is convinced of your expertise, your creativity and the significance of your findings, should you have the opportunity to carry out the experiments you’ve proposed. To begin you must identify your research question. This may be the hardest part and the most fun. You can start by finding a handful of topics to share with your lab partner. Together you should discuss and evaluate the topics you’ve gathered. Consider them based on:
It might be that not one of the topics you’ve identified is really suitable, in which case you should find some new ideas. It’s also possible that through discussion with your lab partner, you’ve found something new to consider. Both of these outcomes are fine but relatively quickly you and your partner should settle on a general topic or two so you can begin the next step in your proposal writing, namely background reading and critical thinking about the topic.
Once you and your partner have decided on a suitable research problem, it’s time to become an expert on the topic. This will mean searching the literature, talking with people, generating some ideas and critically evaluating them. To keep track of your efforts, you should start a wiki catalog on your OpenWetWare user page. How you format the page is up to you but check out the “yeast rebuild” or the “T7.2” wiki pages on OpenWetWare for examples of research ideas in process.
Prepare a 12 minute powerpoint talk that describes the research question you have identified, how you propose to study the question and what you hope to learn. A general outline your research proposal presentation is:
On the day you present your team should print out and bring two copies of your powerpoint slides. Black and white is fine and you can print more than one slide per page if you like. You should also write and print out your "talking points" into the comments box of each of the slides you'll present. These are speaking notes for your presentation. They should include the words you'll use to describe each slide and the transitions you've planned between them. For example, in a presentation last term one slide's talking points were:
As you can see from this image, taken from a review on hydrocarbon metabolism in marine bacteria, the alcanivorax species is the first to grow in population after an oil spill, and its growth correlates with a decrease in aliphatic hydrcarbons.
After most alkanes have been degraded, the Cycloclaticus species blooms while aromatic hydrocarbon levels decrease
One thing to note is that as soon as they have done their job, both species return to their normal population levels.
One problem with using Alcanivorax and Cycloclasticus to clean oil spills, however is that they can only be found in specific locations
The next slide (transition statement) began: To remedy this, we decided to look into other bacteria into which we could move the hydrocarbon metabolic pathways
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