Once you become the scientist whose name others circle in the conference program, your academic career develops much easier: citations to your journal papers accumulate, collaboration opportunities mount, and research funding starts to flow.
What’s special about the Five-S pyramid?
Most scientists are not born public speakers. In fact, most would rather go to a dentist than step onto a conference stage.
The Five-S pyramid was created by a scientist for scientists. It will show anyone, even the most self-conscious researchers, how to master presentation skills, regardless of whether it is for a conference, workshop, or lecture.
The pyramid is based on the proven conscious-competence learning model. At first, you will get to know what makes up for a great scientific presentation. With this knowledge, you can decide for yourself which specific skill to acquire and polish it until you reach the conscious competence level. Once finished with one specific skill, repeat the process with another.
About the author
Hi! I am Martins Zauanis and I work as a scientist at a Swiss national materials research institute Empa.
What you see below is my heart rate during a presentation early in my academic career. You will notice the peak heart rate is about the same as when I am running a competitive race.
Despite not having a talent for it, I learned to give powerful scientific presentations. Presentations helped me to build partnerships, attract citations and ensure research funding. My journey to becoming a scientist at one of the most prestigious research institutions in the world (ETH group) has relied heavily on my presenting skills. I have first-hand experienced the incredible impact that scientific presentations can have in driving an academic career.
If even I could learn to give powerful presentations, you can do it too. To help you, I laid out the principles of scientific presentation Skills using what I call “the Five-S presenting pyramid”. It offers a blueprint for acquiring the scientific presentation skills that any researcher should possess.
The book “Scientific Presentation Skills”
Of course, a single cheat sheet can not explain everything there is to know about giving scientific presentations. That is why I wrote a book titled “Scientific Presentation Skills”. In the book, I present in detail each of the Five-S pyramid levels and provide many real-world examples from scientific conferences.
Design attention-grabbing conference posters
In the book “Scientific Presentation Skills” I will also show you a three-step approach for creating and presenting scientific posters. This approach will ensure that your posters first attract the attention of visitors and then facilitate fruitful conversations.
The book also includes three poster templates. Each of them better than the traditional wall-of-text type poster traditionally used in conferences.
See what happens after reading book “Scientific Presentation Skills”
See the book melt in front of our eyes 🙂
The Peer Recognized book series
Eventually, there will be six books in the Peer Recognized book series, each of which will focus on one of the primary academic communication skills that will help to build an academic career. As you can see in the figure, the books are arranged in a sequence that reflects the needs at the different stages of an academic career. Depending on your career stage, choose which one to read.
“Scientific Presentation Skills” is the third Peer Recognized book and you already saw what to expect from it. Here is more information about the other five books in the series:
