Rosie recently won the University of Bristol’s 3 Minute Thesis (3MT) competition for her talk on ‘Fungal secondary metabolites: exploring a kingdom of possibilities. Rosie tells us about her experience and some top tips about presenting your research in a virtual world.
3MT® (or Three Minute Thesis) is a competition for doctoral students, originating from the University of Queensland, which stipulates that competitors must present their research in just 3 minutes – any longer and they are immediately disqualified. Normally, the competition is held in person, in front of an audience, but due to COVID-19, in the past two years, the competitions have been moved online, presenting a new challenge – how do you engage an audience who can walk away from their screen at any time?
I decided to take part in Bristol Doctoral College’s 2021 3MT competition for several reasons. The first, to improve my presenting skills, especially in a virtual world I wanted to teach myself how to adapt to this. Secondly, I hadn’t set foot in the lab since December 2020, and I was just about to head back to research after a PIPS placement when I submitted my 3MT application – I needed to refamiliarize myself with my research and what made it so exciting (how better to do this than explaining your project and arguing why it is important in a concise way). Lastly, I’d heard great things from colleagues who had taken part in the Bristol Doctoral College 3MT in the past so why not give it a go myself?
The whole experience was hugely rewarding, and the support is given by the Bristol Doctoral College and the other candidates was key in my success. There were never any feelings of intense competition but rather mutual support and a desire to communicate research in an accessible manner. Potentially winning the competition was simply a bonus to all the skills you picked up along the way. So here are the key things I learnt:
1. Eye contact is crucial – we know that this is true for in-person presentations, you can’t stare at the floor the whole time, but how do you convey this when you’re using a computer or laptop? Look straight into the camera. The temptation is always to look at your audience to see how they are responding to you, as you would normally, but if you are looking at your screen you don’t seem as prepared. Perhaps the easiest way to teach yourself to make eye contact with a virtual audience is to record yourself and watch it back. This also helps you to see what your body language is like and if it adds to or distracts from your talk. Not only this but looking at the camera does actually help with nerves since you can ignore anything else going on in that video call and just focus on presenting.
2. Check your presentation is appropriate for your audience by practising it in front of people in your target group. This could be friends, family, or colleagues, and they don’t have to listen to the whole thing, even just 1 slide or the first 30 seconds would be useful. If you’ve lost them already, you need to rethink things. Even though I was lucky enough to be the winner of this year’s competition, I’m definitely guilty of this too. In my first version of my 3MT talk, the first word I said was “peptide”. Admittedly this was key to my presentation but perhaps not the most exciting way to start off, especially if your audience doesn’t know what a peptide is – something my fellow 3MT competitors pointed out to me. On that note, if you have to include something technical or complex in a presentation to a lay audience, give yourself plenty of time to explain it and metaphors can really help with this – but make sure you use something most people will know (i.e., you shouldn’t need to explain your metaphor too).
I’m looking forward to going onto the next stages of the competition, seeing what other doctoral students across the UK are up to, and picking up some useful skills as I go along.
Less than 8% of entry level PhD students end up as tenured academics1, so what do students do after gaining their PhD? What career options are there? The Life Sciences Building held a careers event featuring talks from five University of Bristol alumni to find the answers. Each speaker completed a postgraduate research degree at the University of Bristol and shared their diverse stories of going from postgraduate students to embarking on their careers. They shared their personal experiences on how the skills they learnt throughout their degrees helped them get to where they are today and gave advice on what you can do to achieve your post-research degree career. We also spoke to current postgraduate students at the subsequent networking session about their thoughts on the talks and plans for their own careers.
The first talk of the evening was from Dr Kate Pressland. Kate did a Zoology Bachelor’s degree at Bristol where she particularly enjoyed the field course to Portugal, as this included a lot of species identification. After this, Kate secured a job in Professor Jane Memmot’s group on a field survey project which required a lot of attention to detail and patience. After this contract, she grabbed a PhD opportunity that arose, investigating pheasants as a non-native species. Kate learnt an important lesson while conducting her PhD research: that game keepers or farmers don’t read academic papers but will listen to people who actually talk to them about practises that may benefit them. Kate found this aspect interesting and wanted to work with practitioners in this way. After her PhD, Kate worked for the Avon Wildlife Trust running a wetland conservation project, and is now responsible for managing Innovative Farmers, a farmer-led research programme run by the Soil Association. Kate advises maximising your transferable skills throughout your PhD in order to make you adaptable to job opportunities that may arise, and being open to various job options, such as working for charities.
Dr Kate Pressland
The next speaker was Dr Celia Duff-Farrier, who completed her Biology undergraduate degree and her PhD in Agricultural Biotechnology in the School of Biological Sciences. Celia then took on a short Postdoctoral position in the same lab, with Prof Gary Foster. After this, Celia left academia and went on to undertake the NHS Scientist Training Programme (STP), allowing her to retrain as a Healthcare Scientist in Genomics. The STP is a three-year training programme that trains the individual as a clinical scientist and also provides an MSc qualification. It includes a research project and also an elective project, where Celia went to Brazil to observe private healthcare practices. Celia said that although she initially began her career working in plants, genetics underpins everything, so it is possible to move away from what you originally start working in; however it does require retraining among people who are a lot more knowledgeable about the subject. The working environment is also very different to research labs in a university.
Dr Celia Duff Farrier
Thirdly, Dr Ana Castro-Castellon spoke about her career in water quality. Ana grew up in Colombia, and then moved to Spain, where she undertook her undergraduate degree in biological sciences. She became interested in microbiology and parasitology and moved to the UK to work as a Regional Biologist for Wessex Water. Ana encountered an environmental issue which deserved further research and, so, decided to undertake an MSc with Prof Marian Yallop and Prof Paul Hayes at Bristol, performing research in the area of Ecosystems and Environmental Change. After this, Ana took the opportunity of completing a PhD in Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of Oxford. Following this, she joined Thames Water as a Process Scientist. Her current role ensures that the water we drink meets the regulatory criteria to protect public health and the environment. When pursuing a career, Ana believes that it is important to do something that genuinely matters to you because this gives you the energy to progress in your career. Furthermore, Ana advises to take as many opportunities as you can while you are within a role, in order to grow and move on to the next stage in your career.
Dr Ana Castro Castellon
The penultimate speaker was Dr Anna Tiley. Anna graduated from the University of Oxford in 2011, she then undertook an internship at Kew Gardens before starting her PhD. Anna’s PhD was carried out in the Molecular Plant Pathology and Fungal Biology group at the University of Bristol – supervised by Dr Andy Bailey and Prof Gary Foster, and was part of the BBSRC South West Biosciences Doctoral Training Partnership (SWBio DTP). As part of this PhD studentship, Anna completed a three-month internship at the Royal Society of Biology. After finishing her PhD, Anna secured a Postdoctoral Researcher role based in the Molecular Plant Pathology lab at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. Anna intends on staying within academia by securing a fellowship and has research interests abroad. Anna believes in the importance of being a well-rounded scientist, her suggestions to postgraduate students for being successful include: attending conferences to present research and network, take on opportunities to teach, join societies and apply for internships and travel grants.
Dr Anna Tiley
The final speaker was Dr Karen Varnham. Karen was inspired by a lecture on invasive species during her Behavioural Ecology Masters at Manchester Metropolitan. This led to Karen becoming a self-employed, self-titled, rat-catcher, removing invasive rats from islands where they were causing ecological problems. Feeling she was not yet done taking exams, Karen undertook a PhD as a mature student in Bristol, supervised by Jane Memmott in the Community Ecology Group. After completing her PhD, she worked in the LSB Admin Office for a year, before taking up her current role with the RSPB as their Island Restoration Officer. This role involves advising people within and outside the organisation on best practice methods for removing invasive species and preventing them from becoming established in the first place, as well as training, report writing and developing new projects. Her current job is mainly desk-based but includes enough visits to islands to keep her happy. Whilst she enjoyed being self-employed, Karen believes that working for a larger organisation gives her the opportunity to make a greater impact. Karen said that although a PhD was not essential for her current role, it gave Karen vital background understanding of her job, and improved her technical writing skills.
Dr Karen Varnham
After the talks, a networking session was held in the Life Sciences Skylounge to give students the opportunity to chat with the speakers. General feedback from the audience was how much they enjoyed hearing about the diverse range of career opportunities there are post-PhD. One student said: “although there were only a handful of talks, they are all in different fields, I hadn’t heard of any of these job roles before, so we have been opened to diversity”. Furthermore, for those students who had an idea of what they would like to do, hearing from more people in those fields gave them reassurance: “I’m thinking about working for a charity, and it is nice to know that those working for charities felt valued and it has given me more confidence in the direction I would like to go in”. Overall, this was a fantastic opportunity for postgraduate students to hear from those who have previously been in their situation, to hear how they managed to get to where they are today, and, importantly, provide the students with tips and advice in order to achieve their career goals. Although many students coming to the end of their post-graduate studies are still unsure of what they would like to do next, this event has provided some advice on how they can set themselves up to be in the best possible situation, with many transferrable skills, to ensure they are considered for job opportunities. It is also worth noting that further information for Bristol postgraduates can be found from the Careers Service.
Written by Fiona Belbin (Biological Sciences PhD), and Grace Fraser (year 3 Biology BSc)
(or Three Minute Thesis) is a competition for doctoral students, originating from the University of Queensland, which stipulates that competitors must present their research in just 3 minutes – any longer and they are immediately disqualified. Normally, the competition is held in person, in front of an audience, but due to COVID-19, in the past two years, the competitions have been moved online, presenting a new challenge – how do you engage an audience who can walk away from their screen at any time?
