With the 2019 symposium looming in the distance of summer, we thought we’d shed a little winter light on how we put together last year’s stunning programme, what we’ve learned, and what we have planned for Friday 21st June 2019.
We hope you enjoyed our fantastic programme of talks and range of posters in 2018 – all showcasing the excellent research of FMS! The organising committee were overwhelmed with the response: over 50 talk abstracts to choose from, and a dozen papers! We’re keen to share how we judged the abstracts, papers and posters, so that the competition becomes even fiercer in 2019, and so you know what it is we’re looking for and how…
If you have any feedback to share, please do so via the feedback form, or directly by contacting us through the links on the ‘contact us’ page – this can be signed or anonymous! Keep your eyes peeled for details for the 2nd Annual FMS Post-Doctoral Research Symposium!
Talk Abstracts
We invited you to submit abstracts for consideration as a speaker (ie. talk only), as a poster presenter (poster only), or both (talk or poster). It was decided that committee members could not be considered for oral presentations but were free to bring posters. A total of 54 abstracts were submitted from across the faculty from post-docs who wished to be considered for oral presentation.
A member of the committee then used the webform output to anonymise the abstracts and circulated a pdf of all 54 numbered abstracts bearing only the talk title, the abstract itself, the institute the speaker worked in, and some keywords. The committee then read the abstracts and scored them on a scale of 1-3 (with 3 being the best), recorded in a google sheet. All 54 abstracts were assessed by 8-11 committee members, and the scores averaged and standard deviations calculated.
So what were the committee looking for? Crucially for a cross-institute symposium, the abstract was read by representatives from all six institutes and so we were looking for talks which were of wide interest. By scoring and averaging the marks, we wanted to find the abstracts with the widest appeal. We were also looking for clear language with minimal, or well-explained, jargon.
Then, one morning, the committee met and decided upon the programme. We were very impressed by the quality of the submissions! We sorted the abstracts by average score, and then by standard deviation of the score; this way, we could easily see which abstracts were scored highest, and which our committee agreed/disagreed about. The highest scoring abstract from each institute was selected to make our first list of six speakers and we sorted these into the session themes. Then, to fill the remaining slots, we looked as a group at the second and third highest scoring abstracts, as well as some of the committee’s favourite or most memorable abstracts. We selected the second set of six abstracts focusing on: diversity of topics, diversity of institutes, and how they fit our session themes. Finally, we picked a ‘back up’ talk from each institute in case a speaker was no longer able to participate.
At this point, we were still working with anonymised abstracts, referred to only by number in the order of which they were submitted. Importantly, if members of the committee recognised content enough to identify the person involved, they recused themselves from the final decision on that abstract; we tried to be as fair as possible! Once we had selected 12 abstracts and were happy with the programme, we finally cross-referenced the abstract number with the submission form list! We made a deliberate effort to make the selection process as even-handed as possible and were delighted to see not only a range of fantastic research, but a range of researchers!
Best Paper Selection
We invited the FMS post-doctoral committee to submit their first author papers, with stringent criteria, for a best paper prize. The organising committee did not judge this prize, and therefore the committee members were able to submit their work. Behind the scenes, we designed a simple form for scoring of the papers, and assembled a crack team of special guest judges: Dr. Kevin Waldron (ICaMB), Dr. Paula Salgado (ICaMB), Prof. Sophie Hambleton (ICM), Prof. Simi Ali (ICM), Prof. Helen Arthur (IGM), Prof. Melissa Bateson (IoN) and Prof. Craig Robson (NICR). This academic panel assessed the paper in scores of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) based on:
- Quality of Writing: Is the paper well written and accessible to those within and outside the particular field of research? Could this be reasonably understood by a final-year undergraduate?
- Contribution to the Field: Does this paper contribute knowledge and understanding – in novelty or robust reproduction – to the particular field of research?
- Validity and Quality of Methods: Are the methods appropriate to the research question, and are they correctly applied? Are statistical assessments and resulting inferences appropriate and proportional?
- Use of Figures: Are the figures clear, easily understandable, well-described in the figure legend, and appropriate to the purpose?
- Impact and Engagement: How well does this paper communicate economic/social impact or the potential thereof? How well have the community engaged with this paper – altimetric score, citations etc.?
The submissions were outstanding! And we would like to once again thank our academic panel for reading up to six papers each, giving up some of their own time to contribute to this excellent competition. The criteria and guidance text may change for this year’s competition, and we’ve had feedback from our academic panel based on their experience of the papers. In 2019, we hope to receive just as many (if not more!) brilliant papers for consideration!
Best Talk on the Day
Talks were evaluated on the day of the symposium by FMS PostDoc Committee and the evaluation was based on:
- Talks delivery
- Slides quality
- Answering questions
- Accessibility to all FMS audience
- General impression
Each session (Health, Signalling and Structure) was evaluated separately and the winner of every session was selected based on number of points given (1-3, where 3 was maximum obtained in a selected category). Particular attention was made to the talk delivery and its accessibility for all the FMS audience. The final winners list was based on points given by every evaluation criteria. Katarzyna Mickiewicz (ICaMB) was a clear winner as she won in all the categories. Her talk was very clear and very well received by the audience. Second best talk was won by Susanna Millis (IHS) and the third prize was awarded to Dan Peters (ICaMB).
Best Poster
Anyone who had submitted an abstract for a poster was invited to bring a poster. In fact, anyone at all could bring a poster, and that open invitation will run again! We had upwards of 30 posters on display, and some of those post-docs who had missed out on an oral presentation were invited to give flash presentations of their poster to entice the audience. The judging of the posters, however, was left to you! As you all toured the posters, you were invited to vote for your pick for best poster, truly democratising the choice of winners! For that we used an online voting platform that allowed for only one vote to be cast by the same individual.
Looking Ahead to 2019
Though we do intend to tweak some of our processes, the feedback from post-docs, PIs and attendees was overwhelmingly favourable – so if it ain’t broke, we won’t fix it! We have a simplified, single submission form which will allow registration and abstract submission in a one-stop-shop all ready to go! Our panel of academics is under assembly for judging paper submissions – and accepted manuscripts count, so get submitting now! We certainly enjoyed bringing this celebration to our community in 2018, and are now hoping to build on that to make the symposium and annual centrepiece to other on-going activities for the post-docs of FMS.