Chem412: Presentation Guidelines

The theme of this year’s Biochemistry/Molecular Biology Seminar course is “In the News”. It should focus on the results of research that has been published recently in either the journal Science or Nature. Both of these are weekly journals are where late-breaking findings in science are often first reported. While the article you choose as your lead article will be the focus of your presentation, you should also give a historical overview of the problem being researched and to compare the results being reported to those of other research groups who are currently working on the same or similar problems.

Send me an abstract of your talk by Wednesday at 5:00 pm, the week before you are scheduled to give your talk.

You will give your presentation using PowerPoint.

You should send me a copy of your PowerPoint presentation by the Wednesday following your talk.

Elements of the presentation

(2 minutes) Give a brief overview of the lead paper that you selected. This is the paper that was published in either Nature or Science during 2004 or 2005.

Where did the article appear?

Give a short, introductory description of the article.

Describe the research group that reported the research.

(5 minutes) Give an overview of the problem that is being worked on by this group

Provide a historical perspective to the problem along with a sufficient description of the problem that your audience will be able to follow the contributions that were made in your lead article.

(5 minutes) Describe the contributions reported in you lead article that were made towards expanding our understanding of the problem.

(5 minutes) Identify other research groups who are currently working on the same problem and describe how their work either complements or contradicts the work that is reported in your lead article. Locate articles published by these groups by doing a Science Citation Index search on a landmark article that is cited in your lead article.

(2 minutes) Provide a conclusion that summarizes the current understanding of the problem and list your references.

(5 minutes) Take questions from the audience.