How to Use Conferences for Your Career: Every PhD Student Needs It

In this episode, I discuss how you can maximize your conference attendance as a student or postdoc. This episode is especially useful if it's your first time going to a conference, or if you want to bring up this topic with your supervisor.


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00:00 - Intro

PART 1: How to Approach Your Advisor about Conferences
02:32 - Discussing conference attendance with your advisor
03:15 - Show how valuable it will be for your career
03:42 - Regarding funding & applying in advance
05:08 - Lab policies for conferences

PART 2: When you’re planning the attendance
05:30 - Share your plans with group members
06:38 - Give the abstract to your advisor in advance!!!
07:22 - Bigger or smaller conference?
08:19 - Poster or research talk? Or both?
16:33 - Should you present unpublished data or not?
16:51 - Why students & postdocs should attend conferences with unpublished data
17:48 - Submit the abstract while still working on the manuscript
18:10 - Do NOT submit abstract without supervisor’s confirmation
18:23 - Who owns the data and supervises its usage
20:10 - The content of an abstract

PART 3: What to do after the abstract is accepted
20:33 - Announcing about your talk / poster
21:18 - Using a conference to explore other groups
23:20 - Politeness is key when you schedule meetings
24:41 - Scheduling personal meetings with professors
26:41 - Let others know about your talk
27:22 - Which talks to attend?
29:33 - Preparing your pitch
32:30 - Preparing your talk

PART 4: What to do when you’re at the event
33:08 - Don’t hang out with group members too much
34:16 - Don’t sit only in your own session
35:36 - Visit industry exhibition & talks
36:09 - Attend faculty candidate poster sessions
36:44 - Check out mentorship sessions
37:04 - Attend social events
38:00 - Collaborations
39:34 - Ask questions & follow up on them
40:20 - Explore other groups
41:01 - Meet your PI’s collaborators
41:34 - Write down important info


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