About Your Flash Talk

The flash talk exercise is an informal and fun way for the audience to get to know you and for someone interested in your research to remember you and stop by your poster at the poster session later or approach you for potential collaboration during the conference. You are requested to keep your talk under three (3) minutes in order to get trained in giving concise and “to the point” presentation about your research to a non-expert audience.

It is suggested that you frame your presentation to parallel your PowerPoint presentation: your first slide should have the name and title of your PEER grant as well as a series of bullet points to cover the scienctific impact. The second slide should cover the development impacts. As your PowerPoint slides appear on the screen, you will be giving your flash talk in front of an audience including both experts and non-experts, so it is important to make your presentation accessible enough to a non-expert audience.

We understand that for most of you, English is not your first language and you may be nervous about talking in front of a large audience, however we do not expect you to memorize your presentation and you will not be answering questions but merely introducing your research to a general audience.

A sample two-slide presentation is available here; this is for reference only and you don’t have to use the exact same wording. Please remember not to write excessively long sentences, you can write three to four bullet points per slide and you can uses pictures, which are more powerful communication tools.

You are expected to send  your PowerPoint presentation by September 16th to peer@nas.edu in order for us to upload it beforehand and have it ready on the screen. If you don’t send us your presentation by the deadline, we will just have a slide with your name and affiliation on it that the PEER Science Office would create and include in the slide deck.

In the meantime, start practicing a 3 minute presentation while going through your powerpoint, practice speaking slowly and clearly, and do not forget to cover the development impacts of your work. Again, this is supposed to be a fun, informal and inviting way to get the audience excited about your research. During the conference, we will organize sessions with trainers to practice your flash talk and help you give a successful presentation.

Here is the current schedule for the flash talks.