This page has some tips for undergraduate researchers attending, or presenting at, an academic conference.

Here are some tips for attending any conference, even if you're not presenting anything.

Conferences can have lots of events: talks, poster sessions, panels, social events, etc.

It's helpful to look at the program a few days in advance and decide what you might want to go to.

Personally, I have a "tentative" calendar that I add different events to. I then choose events somewhat spontaneously. For example, if I see someone I haven't seen in awhile, I might skip a talk to chat with them, or go with them to a different interesting talk.

But if all else fails, I can look at my calendar and pick something to do.

Most of a conference's time is usually scheduled for research talks. That's what people are here to "confer" about, after all.

But you can read the paper and get a good chunk of what you would in the talk. Even for asking questions, you could probably email the author.

What you can't easily do outside of a conference is meet people in the field and get to know them. This might be other students, professors doing work you're interested in, or even potential employers.

Personally, I now try to only attend talks for papers where I'm skeptical of the results or think there might be some spicy discussion. Other than that, I usually try to find people to talk to.

Along with your name and institution, one of the first questions you can expect to be asked is, "What do you work on?"

It's typically good to have at least a 30-second introduction of your research. I usually start with my biggest area of interest, describing the high-level problems we're studying and why they're important, and then talking about a few other topics I'm interested in.

If you have the time, it can also be helpful to prepare a longer introduction (90 seconds) of your research for those who know the area well or want more details. Here, I usually also talk about the major approaches to our research (e.g., ideas we're building on, specific software libraries/technologies, methods) and relevant past projects I've done.

The person might ask questions about your work. This is usually a good thing since they're engaging with your ideas. If a question comes across as confrontational, try not to take it personally - most people are just well-intentioned and trying to understand (and give feedback on) your research.

It may seem daunting to approach other researchers and introduce yourself, especially if you're a bit nervous about how to talk about research.

You can (and should) ask your advisor to introduce you if you're interested. This is part of their job, and it can really help to hear someone else explain your work to other researchers in the field.

Your first few conferences may feel overwhelming. ASEE (the big North American conference in engineering education) is enormous, with tons of things going on at any given time.

If it's too much, you should feel free to take a break, explore the city, or meet up with others outside of the conference venue.

The only thing I wouldn't recommend doing is spending a majority of the day in your hotel room not doing anything. A bit of email/calls/etc. is fine, but too much and you'll miss out on the unique opportunities the conference can offer you.

If you're presenting a poster, you'll typically have a session of 1-2 hours to stand by your poster and discuss your work with others. Here are some tips for presenting a poster at a conference.

The point of a poster is not to communicate everything about your project in visual form. A poster should summarize the most important takeaways of your work and show just enough detail of your work to support those takeaways.

Be strict about what you do and don't include in your poster. When deciding whether to include a detail or not, ask yourself:

• How much more will the viewer understand your work with this detail?
• How much effort will it take for the viewer to read and digest this information?

One thing you can do is go over your idea with someone you know that isn't too familiar with the area. Start by summarizing your idea to them, and only add in the details that they ask about in the first 2 minutes or so.

Most people will just walk by your poster and briefly glance at it, if at all. They'll probably see the title, top-level headings, and visuals. If that interests them, they'll look more closely.

Because of this, you should make it easy to get those takeaways even for viewers who are just passing by. Here's an example:

Don't just put dense blocks of text. For projects where data visualization is appropriate, make sure that the visualizations have enough detail and large enough font.

If there's more about your work to talk about, provide a link where people can read more. At a minimum, consider adding a link to the poster PDF itself.

It's best to include both a QR code and a short URL. This makes it easy for people to get the link even if their phone is dead, etc.

As people walk by, some might stop to read your poster. Give them a few seconds to quickly digest the content, then go over and say that you'd be happy to tell them more about the work or answer questions if they'd like.

They might not talk more with you, but your chances of engaging viewers in a discussion is significantly lower if you just politely watch them reading your poster.

If you're giving a talk, you'll probably get 10-20 minutes to talk through a research paper.

The talk shouldn't be a summary of your paper. The talk is an advertisement for your paper. The goal of the talk is to get your audience excited to read your paper.

Design your talk so that it's engaging and intuitive: get them thinking about questions, highlight key phrases and ideas, use visuals, and aim at communicating an intuitive feel for your idea.

Advertising your paper does not mean that you should an overview of the entire paper.

Instead, you should find the most important key takeaway of the paper (the "technical meat" of the paper), and spend time digging into it.

Give concrete examples to work with, and be sure to highlight the most important idea ("If you remember nothing else, remember this: ...").

Don't be afraid to tell the audience, "You can check out the paper for more details on this part." But remember that they may ask questions, so you still need to know the content of your paper very well, even if you don't present it.

Many people get nervous when starting a talk. Tripping over words or losing your train of thought in the first few minutes can cause a lot of people to disengage.

I find that it's helpful to write out and memorize the first minute or two of my talks. That way, I can be on autopilot long enough to get over my initial nervousness.

Practice until you're confident that you can stay within the time limit. Many talks run over time, and lots of people will start to disengage as you pass the time limit. Some people jump between talks in different rooms and might leave at a certain time no matter what.

Do not go over time. This leaves enough time for questions and makes sure that people stay engaged for your full talk.

Feel free to contact me if you have more questions! I'm also happy to provide you with example posters/slides on request.

• Penn State's examples of good and bad posters: https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/sites.psu.edu/dist/a/36309/files/2016/04/Posters-The-Good-and-the-Bad.pdf
• Colin Purrington's example of a bad poster: https://colinpurrington.com/2012/02/example-of-bad-scientific-poster/
• Colin Purrington's post on designing posters: https://colinpurrington.com/tips/poster-design/
• Simon Peyton Jones's page on giving a good research talk: https://simon.peytonjones.org/great-research-talk/