This seminar aims at assisting PhD students in developing a concise presentation of their research project.

- Students will improve their communication skills in an academic and business context by applying and training the logic of top-down communication. As such, they should be enabled to communicate the research gap and the contribution of their research project more precisely.

- In a hands-on workshop format, you should leave the seminar with a clean and compelling presentation deck and an accompanying extended abstract for your current research project. The extended abstract can also serve as input for your official PhD proposal to be submitted.  

- By reflecting on the projects of their peers, PhD students improve their ability to provide constructive feedback in a peer review process, to gain new insights, and/or to acquire new research ideas.

The aim of the seminar is to go hand in hand with the ongoing research activities of the PhD students.

The seminar will be a mix of theoretical input, hands-on exercises, in-class work on your projects, and individual coaching sessions:

- The first seminar date will be dedicated to lay the theoretical foundations of top-down communication and storylining. Please come prepared to quickly orally introduce your research topic to all seminar participants. The theory will be applied to your research topic in several hands-on exercises. In addition, the afternoon of the seminar will be dedicated to successful power point designs. For this, participations are invited to send in selected slides they are struggling with how to distill the main message or how to present their findings etc.

- The second seminar date will be hold as individual coaching sessions to work on your storyline and conference presentation. Please come prepared with the current status of a power point presentation, already incorporating the lessons learnt from the first session.

- The final seminar date will be a joint presentation day where all participants present their conference presentation, followed by a detailed discussion and feedback session by all participants. This date can be used as dry-run if PhD students are planning to attend a conference in the following months. In addition, it is an opportunity to discuss challenges and receive feedback from peers in a risk-free environment.

All PhD students across all Departments are happy to join. The seminar might be especially fruitful if you have already kick-off a research topic and have initial insights, or are planning to attend a conference or have to present in a different form in the following months.