Finding Your Research Voice

Learning to tell a compelling research story can have a significant impact on your career. It can make you stand out at professional conferences, on the job market, or during an ideal networking opportunity. It is easy to tell a research story badly. It takes time and effort to learn to tell a research story well. This compact and engaging volume presents a series of techniques followed by theatre-inspired, field tested exercises that will help you improve your research presentations. Once you’ve learned how to create a dynamic live performance of your research story, you may find that this professional obligation is no longer something to dread, and may even become a highlight of your research experience.

• Theatre techniques science presentations
• Great science talk skills
• Improve science talk
• Science communications guide
• Theatre techniques scientists
• Scientific presentation skills
• Effective science communication

• Department of Physics, Cornell University, Ithaca, USA

  Itai Cohen

• Department of Drama, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada

  Melanie Dreyer-Lude

Melanie Dreyer-Lude is chair of the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. She specializes in international theater collaboration, using as a laboratory to explore cross-disciplinary opportunities. Her research has included work in Germany, Turkey, Uganda, Russia, Chile, and the United States. Fluent in German, Dreyer-Lude translates and directs contemporary German plays, which have been published and produced in the United States and Canada. 

Itai Cohen is a Professor of Physics at Cornell University, where he works on materials in motion. His research topics have ranged from studying the behavior of shear thickening fluids like corn-starch, to the flight of insects, to microscale robots, and the behaviors of crowds. Professor Cohen has given over 250 invited public, conference, and departmental speaking engagements. He has chaired the American Physical Society Forum on Outreach and Engaging the Public (FOEP), and organized numerous professional development workshops on science communication.

Dreyer Lude and Cohen are the organizers and instructors of the popular Finding Your Scientific Voice workshop, which has been run at various venues including Cornell University, SUNY Upstate, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the APS March Meeting.

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