Research Workshops

BMB Research Workshop seminars are intended primarily as a forum for BMB students to describe their research and develop their presentation skills. All BMB Program faculty, postdocs, and students are expected to participate in the weekly Research Workshops.

Presentations should cover one or more aspects of the speaker's research. To leave time for questions and discussion, presentations should be timed to last no more than 45 min. Workshop presentations can serve as Advisory Committee progress report presentations or thesis defense presentations - just make sure arrangements are made for committee members to attend!

Assigned speakers should give Nina Smith the title of the talk a week in advance for preparation of the announcement sheet. A worksheet/evaluation guide for use by the reviewers is available for downloading here.

For graduate student talks, three reviewers (two other students and a faculty moderator) are assigned to confer briefly with the speaker after the seminar. These discussion sessions are intended as constructive feedback on areas where the presentation was effective and on areas where changes might improve future presentations. Reviewers thus are encouraged to stay awake and take notes during the presentation! Reviewer worksheets are collected by the faculty moderator after the discussion session, but are not used for grading of student presentations.

Please note that it’s the responsibility of the First Reviewer to give a brief introduction for graduate student speakers. Please contact the speaker in advance to get their cv to prepare the introduction.

If a scheduling conflict arises, the assigned speaker (or reviewer) is responsible for arranging a substitute. Please contact Dr. Yang Xia with the name of an agreed substitute as far in advance as possible.

In the interest of caloric moderation (and the departmental budget), please limit yourself to two slices of pizza on the first pass; leftovers are fair game after the presentation.