Research Paper Presentation

Every student will present in the class 1 to 2 research paper listed in the course schedule. Your presentation should be roughly 25 minutes long and allow 5 minutes for questions. You have a maximum of 30 minutes.

You should try to address the following questions during the presentation (not necessarily in this order):

• What problem is the paper trying to solve?
• Why is the problem interesting?
• What new concepts, algorithms, experimental results are reported?
• How does it compare with other approaches if applicable? What are the strengths of the paper? What the weaknesses?
• What insights, if any, have you gained after reading the paper?
• Can the ideas proposed in the paper be used to solve other related problems?

A good presentation should be more than  mere regurgitation of what is written in the paper. It should contain your insights and criticisms after the reading. In particular, every presentation must end with a summary of key points of the paper!

Selection of Papers for Presentation

The papers that you may select are listed as required reading in the course schedule from lecture 6 onwards. I will try to assign papers to match your preferences.

Preparation of Presentation

It takes effort to prepare a good presentation. You should plan to spend 4 to 6 hours to prepare the slides and practice the presentation. It is more important to make clear the most important ideas of a paper than to describe painstakingly all the details. You must use the PowerPoint template to prepare the slides so that we all follow a consistent style that is legible and easy to read. The resources section below contains additional information on how to give a good presentation.

Due Dates

If you are scheduled to present during a particular week, the PowerPoint slides are due Monday noon (12pm) of the week so that I can read them and provide you feedback if there are severe flaws, before putting them on the web. If you miss the deadline and thus I cannot put the slides on the web on time, the penalty is 10% of the grade and likely anger from your fellow students.

Grading Guideline

• Cover the main issues in the paper (see Introduction section above)
• Provide good summary slides
• Give new insights and criticisms
• Explain clearly and precisely
• Clear and easy-to-follow slides that help the audience
• Use the prescribed PowerPoint template

You may consult and use the PowerPoint slides from last year's offering of this course and slides from elsewhere on the web, but you are expected to make improvement over them.

Resources

• How to give a talk by B.R. Donald.
• Giving a technical talk in bioinformatics by R. Altman.
• The short talk by Charles van Loan