Poster Presentations

Presenters are responsible for printing their poster and bringing it to the symposium. Posters must be placed on your reserved boards before 8:00 AM on Friday, March 1, 2024.

Guidelines

Posters may not be larger than 48”x36”.
Posters must be made using a white background.
A firm board, easel, and binder clips will be provided for you at the event.
You are REQUIRED to stand next to your poster during the ENTIRE duration of the session that you are placed in.
The faculty advisor must step away from their student’s poster area whenever the student is presenting.
Advisors are strongly discouraged from assisting students in Q & A/discussions.

Tips/Pointers

Presenters are advised to prepare a 1-minute 'elevator pitch' of their poster that provides a 'big picture' outline to a general audience member. Focus on:

Motivation: What drives your study question(s)? Why was your study necessary?
Methods: What did YOU do in this study? Skip in-depth details of techniques in the 1-min pitch, unless of course your work is in technique development.
Results: 1-2 most significant findings. Resist trying to tell someone to pay attention to a particular data point in a graph.
Wrap-up: How does your finding(s) add/improve our current understanding of the broader topic? Tie it back around to motivation.

Remember, the best pitches are told in the form of stories. Your goal is to make a connection with the visitor to your poster, not overwhelm them with data and show them your technical prowess. Save that for a detailed conversation with them, once you 'hook' them in via your quick pitch.

To ensure your poster is easy to read at a distance, use:

Large font size (> 28 pt)
Itemize highlights/major points.
USE MINIMAL TEXT! Nearly most posters contain too much text.
Use simple tables that are not dense and difficult to read in a short time.
Graphics are great, lengthy captions are not.
Detailed illustrations with lots of labels may not be very legible in a poster.
Use heavy lines in graphs and colors that can be easily distinguished (i.e. maximize contrast).
You want to ensure that letters, formulae/symbols, and numerics are large enough in font size and viewable by someone standing 6 feet away.
Vertical columns are easier to read than horizontal strips.

Make your poster as modular as possible, so that one does not have to review it in a specific order of appearance. This means that you will need to have self-sufficient 'stories' inbuilt into your poster. Remember that multiple people could crowd around your poster, reducing visibility for someone to see it in the order you may want them to.

Credit: Paraphrased from the poster presentation guidelines provided by the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (www.sicb.org)

Logistics

Posters will be displayed in the Student Union Ballroom throughout the duration of the symposium.
Posters must be placed on your reserved boards before 8:00 AM on Friday, March 1, 2024.
Presenter name will be affixed on poster board for identification of reserved spaces.
Posters that are not removed by 5:30 PM will be recycled.