CEM Colloquium: Emily Lakdawalla, “Speak Your Science: How to Give a Better Presentation”

CEM Colloquium

Speak Your Science: How to Give a Better Presentation

Emily Lakdawalla
The Planetary Society

Bad presentation often gets in the way of great science. Professional meetings are an opportunity for scientists to communicate with potential collaborators, employers, or funders about their exciting work. Unfortunately, many people squander their opportunities in the spotlight by delivering confusing, boring, or just plain bad presentations. I’ll provide guidelines on how to prepare a conference talk that will educate and perhaps even entertain, whether your audience is one of skeptical peers or the general public. Much of the advice also applies to writing about your science.

Presenter Bio

Emily Lakdawalla is a passionate advocate for the exploration of all of the worlds of our solar system. Through blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, print articles, Twitter, and any other medium she can put her hand to, Emily shares the adventure of space exploration with the world.

Emily holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in geology from Amherst College and a Master of Science degree in planetary geology from Brown University. She came to The Planetary Society in 2001 to oversee a portion of the Society’s Red Rover Goes to Mars project, an education and public outreach program on the Mars Exploration Rover mission funded by LEGO. She has been writing and editing the Planetary Society Blog since 2005, reporting on space news, explaining planetary science, and sharing beautiful space photos. She appears weekly on the Society’s Planetary Radio podcast, answering listener questions or rounding up the latest space news from the blog.

Emily has been an Administrator of the forum UnmannedSpaceflight.com since 2005, supporting a worldwide community of amateur space image processors. She is also a contributing editor to Sky & Telescope magazine and a frequent host of Cosmoquest Google+ Hangouts. Emily can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, Tumblr, and wherever else she finds people who are equally passionate about space images.