communicating = telling a compelling story

Communicating = telling a compelling story

• Sometimes to an overwhelmed, overworked, uninvested audience

understand and pitch to your audience• Writing

• Abstracts• Papers• Grants

• Talks• Abstracts• Invited presentations• A job talk

The KISS convention

Not that KISS convention

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Abstracts and papers

• Keep on message: what are you asking, how did you address it, what happened when you did what you said you would do, what do you conclude

• You do not need or want to review the entire world literature

• Writing an abstract: analogies to crossword puzzles. • Abstracts:

• Avoid too many abbreviations; if you must abbreviate, avoid abbreviations in the conclusions.

• State a specific conclusion.

Presentations/job talk

• Know the audience. • Start where they are comfortable: a clinical

vignette, a simple cartoon…• Make the broad question you are addressing clear

at the beginning, and throughout (e.g. repeat slides/flow diagram)

• Leave the last bit for future tense, exciting new data …Where are you going, why is it important, you can do it.

Rule #1

A high junk:data ratio

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Another example of chart junk, in my opinion

The PowerPoint default

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The PowerPoint default minus the chart junk

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Patterns and red don’t work on a blue background

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How much data is there anyway?

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How much data is are there anyway?

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7% of US males are color blind. Another reason to avoid red on blue

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amplifier records voltage difference between the tips of the two glass microelectrodes

Use the features of PowerPoint

Use the features of PowerPoint

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Grant-writing: scientific focus

• State a specific over-arching hypothesis and Specific Aims that are testable and important

• Stay away from the trivial• Balance between the do-able and the overly

ambitious• Focus on the problem, not the method

• Not: “we will use a newly-developed mouse to test this idea” but “we will test this idea. One approach is to use a newly-developed mouse…”

• Pick an important problem = advice for your scientific life

Pretty good, huh? And not a single lesson….

Quiz #1

Calypso receiving Telemachus and Mentor in the GrottoWILLIAM HAMILTON RA1751 – 1801

MENTOR: in Greek mythology, friend of Odysseus and tutor of Telemachus. On several occasions in the Odyssey, Athena assumes Mentor’s form to give advice to Telemachus or Odysseus. His name is proverbial for a faithful and wise adviser.

MentoringThere is no one who does not need a mentorDon’t re-invent the wheel – it’s been done before

What goes into a grant?• The science:

• Specific aims• Background and significance• Preliminary data• Methods

• Other stuff that might influence a score:• The investigator• The environment

• Stuff that doesn’t usually influence a score:• The budget

Some grant writing do’s and don’ts

• Reviewers are not infinitely patient.• Make your case on page 1• Make it clearly• Make it legibly• Spell-check• Learn to like to write• Finish the first draft weeks ahead of time

• Time for you to re-review (pretend you didn’t write it)• Time for your mentor and other colleagues to review

• Daily (at least!) backups

Grant writing do’s and don’ts

By the time a reviewer gets to a description of what you propose to do, they should already be convinced that

• the problem is important. • Don’t “characterize”, “describe”, etc. Rather, “test hypothesis”,

“identify…”, “determine the role of…”

• Avoid elevator science: A and C go up; B and D go down…

• the experiments are do-able

• you can do them

• Writing the Specific Aims section (to be discussed)

Some other specifics• Background and significance:

• Don’t review everything there is to know; review what is important to your proposal, introduce new methods. Self-citation is OK in moderation here.

• Preliminary data:• They know what you want to do. Convince them you can do it.

• As soon as you think you are going to write a grant, think about what preliminary data you will need. Don’t leave this for later…

• Methods:• My preference: describe the experiments, pitfalls, interpretation

that will address each Specific Aim; put the details in a separate section at the end.

Form issues

• The Figure 1 Strategy• Fonts and figures• Every paragraph should have a header• Timetable:

• At the end of the Methods section• Reviewers will pillory you for not presenting them• They are near-meaningless, in my opinion.

5 sentences describe the preliminary data and the question to be addressed in Specific Aim 1

Same words for the Specific Aim. The details get increasingly clear as the reviewer reads on

A header for each paragraph

VSMC

ACE

ANGIOTENSINOGEN

ANG I

PAI-1

RENIN

ANG II

KININOGEN

BRADYKININ

INACTIVE PEPTIDES

t-PA

KALLIKREIN

ACE REGULATES VASCULAR FIBRINOLYTIC BALANCE

EC

ANG IV ALDOSTERONE

Inconceivable!I don’t think that word means what you think it means

A picture is worth more than a thousand words…it’s worth hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars

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A visual issue in graphics generation

A visual issue in graphics generation

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The review process

• Imperfect

• Usually impersonal

• Participate on grant review committees if the opportunity arises

• Find out who will review your grant. Cite them (moderately) in the text.

Leave the gun; bring the cannoli

A bad attitude to the review process

NIH Review Criteria

• Significance• Approach• Innovation• Environment• Investigator

• Importance of each component varies during career development

You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability….

An unfunded grant is a re-submittable grantAlso, thanks to the miracles of modern word-processing, a written grant need not be submitted to only one funding agency.

Budgets 101

• PI• The concept of % effort

• Other faculty

• Support personnel• 1-2.5 technical people per PI/grant

• Rule of thumb: <70% of year 1 effort to personnel

Budgets 101

• Equipment

• Supplies: • $1000/month/pair of hands• Mice cost a lot

• “Other”: e.g. travel, service contracts

Budgets 101

• What is an indirect cost?• Who actually gets the grant?• What happens if you move?• Modular budgeting• Departmental sign-off• Why those guys in Grants and Contracts are your

friends• A good paradox: Agencies fund science, NOT

your Specific Aims

The tensions of academic life

• Salary issues• Will I get funded next time round?• My mentor isn’t giving me good advice• My mentor isn’t letting me become independent• My mentor is letting me become too independent• I am independent, but no one outside my

university knows it• My spouse hates me and my kids don’t know me

It's not spaghetti, it's linguiniNow it's garbage.

Throw enough linguini against the wall, and some of it will stick