Career Catalyst: Strategic Presentations for Scientific Minds

Engaging one’s audience is critical in sharing science and conveying to others the importance of the work you do. To practice and hone this skill, CRS had the pleasure of invited Dr. Marina Damiano, owner and founder of the Damiano Group Scientific Communications, to aid in our honing our community of scientists’ communication abilities.  

Damiano, an alumnus of Northwestern, always harbored an interest in science, however throughout her training, she realized her passion for effective communication and sharing of science knowledge, leading her to transition into a science communication role. She establish her own company interested in serving the scientific community through her communication endeavors. Damiano’s extensive scientific background, coupled with her communication training and expertise, offered the CRS community an opportunity to reflect on aspects of effective communication and to develop their scientific communication skills. 

In her presentation, Damiano described the importance of a creative brief as a foundation for a powerful scientific presentation that draws in an audience and efficiently conveys the importance of one’s science. In this exercise, CRS members practiced developing their own creative briefs, considering the audience, content, and key messaging of their research. Delving further into how to engage audiences, Damiano introduced the concept of “scientific storytelling” which strategically presents information in a way that demonstrates a problem, generates interest through tension, and presents a solution thus keeping audiences engaged not only in the content of a science presentation itself, but the journey the researcher takes when developing it. Through these, and other, skillful techniques, Damiano equipped her audience with a multitude of tools to present their research more effectively to their communities.   

Participating in Damiano’s lecture and exercises engaged CRS and offered trainees, professors, and young professionals a setting to practice translating their science into shared ideas for the expansion of the scientific community. All scientists are tasked with communicating their science to a varying strata of our broader community and effective and compelling story telling and communication help to share the important discoveries of our scientific community.