Writing grant proposals is a fact of live for every group leader. This writing can be quite time consuming. Your chance of success depends on a number of factors. The factor I want to discuss here is the originality and the detail of the proposal .

Read more... (519 words, 4 images, estimated 2:05 minutes reading time)

In my book Survival Guide for Scientists I give very precise advise on how, in my opinion, one can improve a scientific presentation. For educational purposes examples of really bad presentations and examples of really excellent presentations can be a very useful complimentary instruction material. When I asked some of my colleagues to allow me to criticize (positively or negatively) a recent presentation of them, they all ducked.

Read more... (218 words, 1 image, estimated 52 seconds reading time)

In my book I classify scientific presentations according to the following scheme:

a)  speaker has no goal apparently
b)  speaker wants to prove he is smarter
than anybody in the audience
c)  speaker wants to give listeners a flavor
of new developments in his field
d)  speaker wants to teach some new
science to the listeners.

In the book I discuss talks of type a), b) and d) to some length, but I say noting about talks of type c). The basic reason being that talks of this type are very difficult to deliver.

Read more... (521 words, 2 images, estimated 2:05 minutes reading time)