Below you will find some general advice for preparing your MR180 and your summary. By following them, you will allow the team that supervises you to help you more quickly and more directly to improve your communication.

1. Learn about past performances to help you develop your storytelling, you can watch some videos of former participants in the competition.
2.  Understand What Is Asked

In a MR180 presentation, it is about explaining your research to intelligent, interested people, but without any specific knowledge of your field. A good way to consider your audience is to imagine that they completed high school with a science major. Nothing more. You then need to find the right analogies, the required metaphors, and the appropriate tone to convey your story. Don't forget, the title says it, MR180, it's YOUR research in 180s.

Effective MR180 communications typically have certain key elements. Here is a non-exhaustive list that will inspire you.

Subject brought

A powerful introduction that captivates the audience while giving them the basic information to follow your research. A good intro is not too long (no more than 1 minute!) and allows you to quickly “set” the subject of your research. Good introductions can contain the following elements:

• An anecdote that illustrates the problems you face in your research.
• A ​​great statistic showing the importance of your field of research
• A question that amuses the audience while stimulating their interest in knowing more
• Any other mechanism to capture the audience’s attention and make them want to know more.

Subject posed

An explicit description of your research topic. This typically includes a sentence starting with: “In my research work, my role is to…” or “The main goal of my research is to…”.

Subject divided

The concrete of your research. Often, postdocs only talk about their field of research and forget to give information about their daily research. However, this is very interesting for the public even if it is often routine for you.

• Providing juicy details about your day-to-day experience in research is very interesting. Examples: What do you do daily (reading, modeling on supercomputers, repetitive pipetting of colorless liquids in transparent containers). Be creative and stimulate the audience's imagination.
• Avoid jargon. Some words may be familiar to you but completely foreign to a very educated audience (cell lines, finite element method, analysis of variance, paradigm shift, etc.). If you use jargon or acronyms, you must take the time to define each term. This is a basic rule in popularization.
• Always speak in the first person. We know that your research would be nothing without your research director or the lab technician, but this is about showcasing YOUR research in 180 seconds. Postdocs often make the mistake of speaking in terms that are too general or impersonal while emphasizing facts and technical data. A MR180 is not a conference presentation. The human factor must be clearly apparent. The presentation must be informative but with a healthy dose of emotion.

Results

It is important to specify where you are and the kind of impact your work has had or will have on the public, on science, on the environment, etc.

A final drop

You must carefully compose the final sentence of your presentation. It must summarize your work and make the audience feel that your story is complete (and make them want to applaud at the end). To do this:

• Take elements from the introduction. This kind of punchline typically rounds out a story very well.
• Exit the scene with a catchy line or aphorism that sums up your entire point.
• Talk about your hopes for your project and its potential impact on society.
• Be positive, enthusiastic, and make the audience dream!

How to prepare your one-page presentation summary

Early in the process, you will be asked to submit a one-page summary of your presentation for validation and advice from the training team. This is a great opportunity for you to receive advice on how you present. For this process to be effective, your summary must be as similar as possible to the presentation you plan to give. Therefore, it is of little use to our team to receive a conference summary or other text that is poorly or not at all popularized. Instead, start writing your presentation as if it were a monologue in a theater. (A MR180s presentation takes up about 1 full page, single-spaced.) Try some analogies, popularization points, etc. This will make it easier for our team to understand your way of seeing your subject and to suggest areas for improvement or simply to positively reinforce the points that are already very good. Once you receive feedback, you will have time to revise your presentation before the dress rehearsal (point below) which typically takes place a week before the competition.

How to Prepare for the Dress Rehearsal

The dress rehearsal is a time when you can try out your entire presentation for the first time in front of a small audience (the other participants). It will be timed in the same way as during the competition. At the end, you will receive feedback from the mentor (often myself) and from the other participants. The more your text is practiced and ready, the more you will be able to receive constructive feedback from the audience. Therefore, it is imperative that you are very well prepared. Note sheets can help you if you are ever afraid of not having time to memorize your text.

Use of Humor in Presentations

Last thing. Humor is not mandatory in this kind of presentation, but people like to relax while learning. With a little humor, when appropriate, the subjects become less dry. Of course, avoid jokes on very serious topics (cancer, war, etc.). Use your judgment but remember that you also have the role of entertaining with your presentation.

Hoping that these few tips gleaned over 12 years of presenting MR180 are useful to you, I wish you good luck in your preparation.