Presenting Research
Summer Research Symposiums feature dozens of international research internship participants from around the world. Presenting research has typically taken the form of research symposiums held in July and/or August. Research interns will be invited to present at one event or the other (not both, unless you really want to!), depending upon factors such as intern arrival and departure dates, as well as balancing participant numbers.
The format of the summer research symposium typically includes sharing printed research posters and/or live, in-person 3 Minute Thesis-style (3MT-style) presentations in order to showcase the innovative projects that research interns are contributing to on our campuses.
Alternate presentation opportunities, including poster and oral presentations, are offered to visiting researchers on campus at other times of the year.
- Late November or early December has become a wonderful time for research interns to network with the English Language School's students in the EAP 550 course. Both international students and research interns /academic visitors may share their projects with the campus community at a joint event, often held in the Education building's 4th floor lounge.
- Mid-March is typically the annual Festival of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (FURCA), for which we are grateful to partner with our colleagues in the Undergraduate Research Initiative office.
Presentation Formats & Requirements
Participants must have the consent of their supervising U of A faculty member to share the research. If unable to publicly share the research, interns are still expected to participate as event volunteers.
The specific guidance for printed Research Posters are as follows:
- 36" x 48" Portrait (36 inches wide by 48 inches high), not Landscape
- Portrait-oriented posters allow us to fit two beside one another on the portable display boards
- Matte Bond finish
- Please feel free to use a free University of Alberta template (this link will open a google drive folder that has the U of A poster templates)
- The template provides suggestions for how to structure the content of the poster
- You are welcome and encouraged to customize the section headers, or even how many sections are on the research poster if you'd like to create more room for photos
- The free U of A templates linked on this page are already saved as 36" (91.44 cm) wide by 48" (121.92 cm)
- If your host professor has a particular format or layout that they prefer, they are the expert! Please listen to them and take their advice.
- ISVS-coordinated interns will receive instructions of how to have the poster printed at SUBprint
- All interns are responsible for submitting their poster a few business days in advance of the symposium in order to ensure that your poster is ready in time for the event
- Exact dates and details will be shared directly with participants closer to the symposium
- The interns based at North Campus (Edmonton) are responsible for picking up their own poster the day before the event
- The interns located at a U of A campus other than North Campus (ex. Augustana in Camrose, Campus Saint-Jean, etc.) will have their printed poster picked up from SUBprint on their behalf by ISVS staff and brought to the event. You will receive it at event check-in. You still need to submit it in advance though!
- All interns are responsible for submitting their poster a few business days in advance of the symposium in order to ensure that your poster is ready in time for the event
The specific requirements for 3MT-style presentations are as follows:
- Participants are allowed three minutes only—no more, no less;
- Participants are restricted to spoken words only - so no singing or dancing;
- Participants can only show one static (still) slide - so no animations, videos, music, or electronic media;
- Participants are welcome and encouraged to use a free University of Alberta template slide
- Participants are expected to contextualize their research presentations for a non-specialist audience;
- Participants should limit the use of technical jargon or scientific terms that only someone else in the research area would know.
Presentation Tips
Research interns are practicing presenting at these events. No one expects you to be perfect!
Before you prepare your own research presentation, whether a research poster or 3MT-style slide, please feel free to check out some student 3MT presentations for reference and inspiration, such as the U of A Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies' 3MT annual competition!
The following information is intended to help guide you as you generate the content of your presentation, along with how you communicate about it.
Content
- A research intern does not need to have final results for a research project in order to deliver a successful presentation—this will simply not be possible in all cases!
- Please feel free to tell us more about the roles or aspects of the project that you are helping out with, or what impact you hope that this research will have on the academic field
- The presentation provides clear background and significance to the research question—the 'why' you're doing it, and 'who' it's aiming to help the most
- The presentation clearly describes the (planned) research design/methodology—the 'how'
- The presentation can be about any stage of the research cycle, such as research question deliberation, literature review, research design, preliminary findings, or results from a recently-completed project—the 'when' and 'where'
- The presentation clearly describes the (projected or anticipated) findings and implications of the research—the 'so what?'
- Please feel free to end your presentation with a sentence or two about what comes next for you on your research journey, or how your audience can connect with you if they'd like to learn more or follow you on your journey!
- Go ahead and put a QR code on your poster that directs people to add you on LinkedIn if you like
Communication
- The verbal summary can be delivered clearly by the presenter in less than three minutes (this goes for 3MT-style presentations or research poster presenters) and was rehearsed in advance
- Research poster presenters should generally start with delivering a concise oral summary or overview, and then get more detailed if the audience desires
- The language was appropriate for a non-specialist audience
- Start out broad and go deeper only if/when your audience has understood the big-picture question(s) that your research area is trying to solve
- If your research can only be described with technical jargon, or with long Latin words that few folks in any audience are likely to be familiar with, it is your duty to unpack these terms and help translate what they mean
- The presenter should strive to make research relatable and understandable by using analogies that relate some aspect of the problem or solution to common human experiences that unite us all, such as music or sports
- For example, is there a function of a cell that is acting like a rogue conductor of an orchestra which has lost the timing/tempo, or like an out-of-tune instrument?
- What approach is being used to get the musicians' timing back in sync? Does it involve swapping out the old conductor with a new one, or modifying it somehow by injecting a new 'metronome' into the conductor?
- Or how does the research project manage to target fixing that one out-of-tune instrument to get the cell's components operating in harmony once again?
- For example, is there a function of a cell that is acting like a rogue conductor of an orchestra which has lost the timing/tempo, or like an out-of-tune instrument?
- The presenter conveyed enthusiasm for their research while capturing and maintaining the audience’s attention
Date modified: 2026-07-29