- When you think of the introduction
it helps to think about what your end goal is.
What do you hope that people leave this talk
thinking about, feeling?
And sort of reverse engineering that
to say okay, if that's where I want this all to end up
what's the way to get into it?
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- An introduction is a place for you to clearly state
your research and what people need to know
to understand your research.
To give your audience what they need
to understand the body of the talk.
I go back to the framework of
who's my audience?
What's my goal?
What's my message?
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- If I'm giving my presentation in a lab meeting
I can tell for sure that most of my colleagues
would know what I'm talking about.
And then the introduction doesn't have to be very lengthy.
- If I am giving a talk
to a more general scientific audience
let's say at a really big conference,
I cannot assume that they are going to know
about the process that I'm working in
or even the organism that I'm working in.
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- What are the basic things that people need to know
to be able to follow the research
that I'm gonna be presenting?
So for example, I worked on microtubules
which are these little ropes inside the cells.
Microtubules are really complex.
The important thing for me to convey to the audience
about microtubules is that there are these ropes
but the ropes are slightly different at one end
or the other so they're polar.
There's what they call the plus end or the minus end.
And these have slightly different structures.
But I didn't go into too much detail.
I just made it clear that understanding microtubules
is really important for understanding a whole different,
a whole slew of cellular processes.
- Really build context to the research that you're doing
and its implications.
So that your audience can really walk away
with that core message at the end of your talk.
Right, and thus you're really achieving that goal
of informing your audience about your research.
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There are many ways to structure an introduction.
And one way that I like to structure my introduction
is I start with a hook.
I follow that with my research question.
And I follow that with the so what?
And then, I end with the background.
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You can start with a question.
You know, asking the audience to think about something.
Or a provocative statement,
or a shocking statistic,
or starting with a personal story.
Like all of these are things that really encourage
your audience to kind of lean in.
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What's the research question?
That will really help to set the stage
for the research story that you're going to tell.
You know that really helps to build the context.
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So what?
So why does your research matter?
- Why should they sit down for half an hour,
10 minutes, one hour to continue listening to you?
- What is it about this question
that is of extreme importance
to the broader community of science?
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- This is what you need to know to understand
what I'm working on.
The experiments I've done and the implications
of those experiments.
- There's no recipe for this is the perfect type
of introduction for a scientific talk.
It's also going to depend on how long your talk is
if you have a five minute talk
your introduction has to be short.
It has to be really concise and to the point.
However, if you have an hour long talk
you might have you know,
10, 15 minutes.
The most important thing is keeping in mind your goal,
your message, your audience and then thinking about
what information, what background,
what context is essential for my audience
to understand what I'm gonna tell them later on.
- Putting that effort into building
a very coherent and complete introduction
definitely pays off.
It sets the stage for the rest of the talk.
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