Introducing SciCommConnect three-minute talk winner Oliver Anderson

In June, the Node, preLights and FocalPlane hosted SciCommConnect, a science communication event focussed on learning new scicomm skills and networking with like-minded researchers. As part of the day, we hosted a three-minute research talk competition, and we were treated to 12 fantastic talks on a range of topics. We had two competition winners, Oliver Anderson and Shreya Pramanik. We caught up with Oliver to find out more about his research and his science communication experience. You can find an interview with Shreya, along with her three minute presentation over on preLights.

Congratulations on winning the short talk competition at SciCommConnect with your fantastic talk about skeletons in cells!

What inspired you to focus your research on microtubule dynamics in human induced pluripotent stem cells? 

Microtubules are very much overlooked across the board, but especially so in pluripotent cells. The microtubule cytoskeleton determines so much about the shape and behaviour of a cell, but in pluripotent cells, very little is even understood about the way it is arranged. It is overdue for looking into and so I am lucky to be digging into it and finding lots of interesting results.

What future directions or questions in the field excite you the most?  

One of the wonderful things about being in biology is the pace at which things change. Every week we find that something is infinitely more complicated than we ever realised. I think the most exciting avenue at the moment is getting a better understanding of how cells make decisions – we are shifting from a gene being on or off as a determinant and understanding that a single phenotype is the result of hundreds of different gradients of expression.

What has been your career path so far? And what’s next for you? 

I did my honours project looking at modelling metabolic disease using Drosophila, which was a great introduction to biological research. This was in 2021, so things were quite disrupted from Covid! An opportunity came from that though, where I was able to work in a pathology lab processing Covid tests for about ~9 months. After that, I returned to uni and began my PhD. I have not fully decided what is next – I have thoroughly enjoyed doing research so I am sure it will still be research, most likely in an academic environment.

Why do you think that science communication is important? Have you been involved in other science communication projects?

Science communication is essential for so many reasons. Public trust in science is being actively undermined, but there is also a lack of public understanding in what scientists do. It is vital therefore that scientists take opportunities to publicly discuss and communicate their research. I would like to do a lot more in the future, but I have been involved in giving demonstrations of microscopy equipment at my institute, and I have provided microscope images to a number of public image displays.

You’ve also been involved in science policy, can you tell us about that?

I had the wonderful opportunity to visit Australian Parliament House, Canberra as part of Science Meets Parliament, a networking opportunity that connected scientists directly with members of parliament. It also featured training on science communication and the avenues to pursue for working in policy. It was a great experience and I am looking forward to putting those lessons into practice.

You won the short research talk competition with a wonderful talk – how did you decide what key points to include to make such a complex topic accessible and engaging?  

It was an interesting experience picking what to present! My original version of my talk tried to discuss several different results but it became obvious that was too much to fit in the time. Picking the key points became what was the clearest and visually striking result of my project. When I found that, I could build the talk around having a quick intro, and jumping straight into explaining those key findings.

What were your main takeaways from SciCommConnect?  

A great presentation comes from all aspects working together – just having nice slides or speaking well in isolation is not a winning combination. I really enjoyed Jamie Gallagher’s demonstration of how appearing confident and calm greatly enhances your engagement with the audience.

Your slide was absolutely beautiful, what role do you think microscopy images should play in science communication? 

Thank you very much! Microscopy images are such a great way of presenting science because for so many reasons. Having a beautiful image really draws in a viewer regardless of their familiarity with the topic, so it is a perfect starting point. Once you verbally provide context, they can really see the process you are describing, or the location of a particular protein. Images really give you so much power to be creative and draw your viewers in to what you are presenting.

Do you have any tips for other researchers on creating impactful slides for their presentations?

The biggest one for me is having just one message per slide. It is extremely common that presenters will have 5 or 6 different graphs or image sets on their slide, and then they will talk through each one sequentially. Sometimes they skip a few as well. The best thing you can do to make your presentation more understandable is to split that slide into 6 and put 1 take-home message on each slide. Your audience will thank you and your presentation will feel so much more polished. A second tip would be to maximise the space you have – stretch your images to fill all of the white space, do not leave parts blank when you don’t have to!

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