Using worms to cure aging

This project was the first project I had complete autonomy over from start to finish. Here, I combined the lessons I learned about what goes into good science with my unique personal taste to define my own philosophy of what good science looks like.

Here, I earned what felt like my rite of passage in the world of academia, and discovered the things unique to me that would make me a successful scientist.

Write Everything Down; All the Greats Did It, So Should You.

During this project, I wrote down every single thing I did from conception to completion. Every experiment plan, every result, every personal reflection. This allowed me to quickly answer questions about my methods, seek advice, and look for places to reiterate if experiments did not go as planned. As this protocol had to be conducted on a 4-day schedule determined by worm growth, it was important to keep the time between experiments close to zero.

Having the entire project history documented also helped me write a 10-page protocol that allowed a data science undergrad who was supposed to take my place to easily recreate my results within 2 weeks.

Note that each page can stand alone. I feel protocols are meant to be active documents where the important pages can be taped up for viewing while your hands are busy. Nothing is worse than needing to maintain sterile conditions, or being elbow-deep in an engine bay, only to flip through a packet.

Your Poster Shouldn’t Be Speaking More than You Do.

After looking at several posters at grad slams and URCA weeks and listening to a handful of pitches, I had an idea of what made the winners stand out. So from there it was my chance to add my own understanding and flair into my first attempt at speaking, at the International Biophotonics Conference at UC Davis Medical Center. I was attending because I had recently developed an interest in how AI was being used in pathology and imaging so what better opportunity to learn about the field and play Mythbusters with my presentation skills?

To attend, presenters had to give a 60-second poster pitch, followed by an hour-long poster session. After the presenter list came out, I quickly found out that I was one of 4 undergrads, and the only undergrad presenting without the accompaniment of a grad student or MD.

The Pitch

After seeing several 3-minute pitches at the grad slam held at UCSB, I found one dividing factor that made people sink or swim in the hot seat: directly mentioning data. The second someone started talking about data in their pitch, they burned most of their allotted time and couldn’t form an interesting narrative for their work. Not to mention, they lost the audience and ultimately had zero hype going into their poster session. Because let’s be frank, nobody cares to hear about your data in a pitch. All you should be doing is building excitement behind your work.

Considering that my pitch could only be 60 seconds, the main goal was to get the audience’s attention by telling them that my lab had found a way to slow down aging with AI and testing on animals in high throughput, all in a Wolf of Wall Street style pitch that I had written and rehearsed to be under 60 seconds.

I started the pitch by telling the audience I had something a little different to talk to them about, and that they should wake up for this one (the conference was 3 days long and started at 7am). This got the crowd, namely the MDs and PhDs, to look up from their laptops. I ended the pitch by pointing the mic toward my poster, which was visible through the large windows in the conference room, and saying, in my plain voice, that I would tell them which drug could slow their aging if they came to my poster talk.

The Poster

I feel there is nothing more engaging than a block of text staring you in the face while the speaker says what is written in said block of text. However, what does work is when the speaker speaks and points to a picture as a visual aid to convey the point he is trying to make. This was my philosophy for building my poster. I should have something to point at at all times while speaking, so that audience members can follow my presentation, and if people jump in mid-presentation, I can quickly refer to my intro figure to give them an idea of what I am talking about.

I had originally had an abstract where my intro figure is now, but I felt the part of your poster where people are meant to get hooked should have a low barrier of entry to create a desire to learn more. Walking past a block of words just doesn’t do that. So my solution was a visual abstract capturing what the problem is, why it is a problem, and how I am fixing it, in three bold sentences with easy-to-follow pictures to add context.

In practice, I would be giving my presentation to a group of people, and someone would walk by and glance at my work. Here, I would pause my talk, shake their hand to welcome them, and walk them through the what, why, and how on my poster to get them up to speed on my project. This let me quickly continue my presentation with them as part of the audience. This is how I developed a crowd around my poster.

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