Kevin Tan's biomedical engineering primer for medical studentsKevin Tan's Biomedical and Clinical Engineering Primer Kevin Guang Fu Tan, M.D.Alma mater: Xi'an Jiatong University, Class of '91. Occupation: Traveling doctor and on-site coordinator for Doctors for TomorrowWhen I'm not working in the field, I'm usually found in NY under a K2 of paperwork.Memberships: Asia Society, China Institute, Chinese Professionals Network, Chinese American Medical SocietyNumber of times returned to China: 3Last fieldwork: Kosovo, EstoniaHow to reach me: 375 West Broadway, 4th FloorNew York, NY 10012 Tel/Fax: (212) 226-9890 Email: email_drtanspam.off@yahoo.com (to reach me, remove the 'spam.off')Doctors for Tomorrow, the independent affiliate of Doctors without BordersUpdated: Dec 20, 2001. [Biomedical Engineering-what is it?] [China's top people] [What can you do with a biomedical engineering degree?] [Biomedical engineering syllabus] [Courses and training] [Job Opportunities] [Grad school's different from med school] [The grad school application process][Grad school from start to finish] [Conference Know-how] [Useful linkage for graduate students] [Meeting transcripts]Biomedical Engineering China-style: the road to better health for the worldThinking about doing something creative, yet related to medicine? Feel a need to build better systems and reduce inefficiencies? Do you get a kick out of solving problems? Are you uncertain you're meant for front line medicine? This website is for you! I have to start off by saying that I am not a biomedical engineer or biomedical physicist or an engineer. Other than the required courses I took at school, I really have no knowledge of engineering. What I do know about are the things I see in my work which need improving, and those things require biomedical engineering (BME). Biomedical engineering goes under different names; clinical engineering, biophysical engineering and applied mechanical engineering are just a few names. For those of you wondering just what the heck BME is, in industrialized countries BME is most visible in tertiary care:Medical diagnosis (e.g., computer-aided echocardiographic texture analysis to detect myocardial infarcts)Medical monitoring (e.g., PET visualization of brain receptors to identify neuronal dysfunction)Radiation therapy (for cancer treatment)Organ-support (e.g., peritoneal dialysis)Therapeutic function (e.g., encapsulation of insulin-producing pancreatic islet cells for diabetes treatment)However, biomedical engineering is not a relatively new field. BME people have opened up new vistas of it, but in the past, science was not so compartmentalized as it is in recent years in China, into material science, engineering science, and life science. But fortunately, the return of holistic BME approach for health and disease was signalled by the formation of the CERNET (Chinese Education and Research Network). What the prominent people in Chinese education's BME started can thus be continued with greater success with the CERNET. The CERNET was started by the Chinese government in 1993 and is directly managed by the Chinese Ministry of Education. The object of BME everywhere, however, not just China, is to transform the traditional industry of medical devices to promote the progress of medical science by combining life science and engineering technology. In 1997, the total output value of the BME industry in China alone increased 27.5% compared to 1996. And we have to keep in mind that this was less than 1% of the total output value of the world. BME is important in improving healthcare and quality of life for the people of the world, and to rise to the challenge of the global problem of rising medical expenses. The increasing rate of medical expenses has been as high as 30% in some areas of the United States, which is much higher than the rate of GNP increase. BME is a means to decrease these escalating costs of medical treatment. Some of China's Top BME namesBack to topH.K. Chang, pioneered a great many BME programs around the world and pulls lots of strings in the BME communities.Jack C.Y. Cheng, major improvements in integrity and efficiency of medical informatics in hospital settings with his work. Not only better management of patient files, but better diagnostic tools too.Shu Chien, very unique career path ie. started as a physician, did his Ph.D. in physiology, then went into blood rheology.Yuan Cheng Fung, often called the "father of biomechanics", did seminal work in microcirculation among other things. His work is cited in 12 subfields in BME.Wei Shu Hu, involved in so many BME fields at the Nobel-prize-quality level, this short name is mind-boggling. Guang Zhong Yang, big name in medical imaging, diagnostic imaging tools. Almost single-handedly invented the field of blood dynamics imaging. Also works on thermal imaging and has improved a variety of soft tissue imaging.Yuan Ting Zhang, often simply called "YT", inspired to become a physician when his father became severely ill and died after a 1 and 1/2 year struggle. But he went into BME instead because of his creativity and interest in research.And the bright future of BME, among the first flight of CERNET graduates who possess M.D. and intercalated degrees. Amazingly, each of them paid for their schooling themselves, without State support, which is unheard of for students of their caliber. I find the work of these three the most interesting out of all the CERNET grads:Lieutenant Frank X.J. Ngan, data mining, KDD (knowledge discovery in databases), artificial intelligence in medicine, aerospace medicine, evolutionary computation and genetic-based programming.Jasmine Q.Y. Pui, tissue engineering, neurology, cognitive neuroscience, improvisation instrumentation systems. Ling Feng Wen, cost-effective homecare and telemedicine, cardiology, computer-assisted emergency care, traditional Chinese medicine integration in home healthcare.I'm currently looking for someone to profile in the field of drug development to counter antibiotic resistance with an incredible track record. Email me at email_drtanspam.off@yahoo.com (remove the 'spam.off') if you know someone I can profile.Why these BME topics matterCellular and tissue engineering are two exciting areas of BME. Imagine being able to restore a multi-drug resistant TB patient back to health, give landmine victims new legs instead of clumsy prosthetics, or a new liver to a patient with hepatic complications. Also imagine eliminating intra- and interobserver variability in mammographic interpretation so that breasts aren't removed due to human error.Researchers in cellular engineering study how cellular components interact with each other in growth, maintenance and decay. By understanding mechanisms, they often develop ways to treat these diseases.In the field of tissue engineering, the control of tissue structure and organization so that tissues grown in the lab will survive once implanted into a human and effectively replace a diseased tissue is an ideal closer to being reached everyday. The organization of a single cell is complicated, but trying to engineer a whole tissue, made of millions of cells, is another feat in itself. Right now, researchers are making new materials with growth factors imbedded into the material to orient growth of populations of cells, trying to control material surface properties to promote the growth of cell populations in a particular way. In the area of homecare or telemedicine, the number of elderly patients in the U.S. is increasing dramatically. We still don't have a way to give low-cost, high-effectiveness monitoring and immediacy of care to our citizens. The interfacial technologies being investigated in China, for example, can be adapted to fit any nation with adequate electrical and hospital infrastructure. Medical data mining and knowledge discovery is a field with a corresponding popularity as using images as diagnostic tools in medicine. There's a need for optimization of data mining tools for near-zero error in mammogram, MRI and histogram analysis. There's also a need for security and confidentiality features to be maximized. Why am I interested in these developments when I'm a field medic? Underdeveloped and war-torn countries are indirectly aided by the speed of implementation of these research advances. The faster these new technologies are in widespread use, the faster today's technologies will become "obsolete", and ready for donation to less privileged patients.In the nations I work in, the main goals are to relieve suffering, cure life-threatening illnesses and develop assist programs with vaccination, nutrition and long-term collaboration with non-governmental agencies. There isn't much concern with old age diseases with the priority on immediate care. Also, these researches ultimately lead to smaller burdens on healthcare systems, hospital administrators and private practices, which will mean more doctors can take time off and/or offer their services abroad (I know you all really want to!)The basic syllabusBack to top In the 1970s and 1980s, the biomedical engineering programs in China were very limited, only to physics and development of medical tools. Since CERNET came along, BME in China has come a long way. Here are the core courses for most BME programs around the world:1. Medical Physics2. Biomechanics3. Biological Transport Phenomena4. Biomedical Systems and Control I5. Biomedical Systems and Control II6. Electrophysiology7. Medical Instrumentation8. Mathematical BiologyThe goals are to:1. Quantify physiological phenomena2. Develop guidelines for reconstructive surgery3. Develop aids for the handicapped and elderly4. Develop assist and replacement systems for organs5. Develop skeletal and cardiovascular implants6. Formulate diagnostic procedures for cardiac and respiratory disorders7. Environmental-stress fatigue in factories8. Develop design criteria for man-interacting machinery.9. Fuzzy and knowledge management systems in clinical settingsFor the frontline medics like myself, we see all the applications of these objectives and courses, but never really connected it to what I learned at school until we actually had to use them and saw how effective/ineffective they were. So for the other medics and would-be medics out there interested in a career in BME, I'm posting an outline here of some interdisciplinary applications of stuff we learn in school:Quantitative/Engineering Physiology1. Biomechanics: applicable to musculo-skeletal systems; cardiac pumping, urodynamics and ventilation processes.2. Biofluid transport: Transmembrane transport of ions and molecules across cell membranes; pulmonary gas exchange; renal ultrafiltration, transtubular transport and urine concentration mechanisms; GI epithelial transport; absorption of water/electrolytes/nutrients.3. Bioelectricity: Transmembrane potential and action potential; impulse transmission in nerves and to skeletal muscle; cardiac excitation and ECG generation; EMG, EEG generation and analysis.4. Chemical-electrical-mechanical control and regulation: Muscle excitation-contration coupling; generation and regulation of GI motitlity systems. Motor function and reflexes; blood pressure, heart rate, and cardiac output control; regulation of blood volume, body fluids and acid-base balance; hormonal secretion and control. So, yes, you can put to use all that suffering through the first two years of physiology and anatomy classes!Right now, BME is undergoing curricula changes around the world to become more relevant to clinical specialties, so even if you specialize now, you can still partner up your medical knowledge with engineering principles later if you find that even specialization is too 'front lines' for you.What kind of training do you need?Back to top Well, schools are making it easier these days. Not to give any specific school names, because I'm not sure what ranking system to use for the dozens that now offer BME programs, here's a look at program options in general.1. Ph.D. degree in Biomedical and Health-care engineeringEntrance requirement: Master's degree in BME or Engineering or PhysicsCourses: usually 30 credits in Medical sciences, biomedical engineering processes, biomedical engineering techniques and informatics, biomedical engineering instrumentation, medical physics (in medical optics, radiology and nuclear medicine, radiotherapy). Artificial organs and assist devices, hospital and health services and econometrics.Thesis: minimum 4 semester residency.2. Ph.D. degree in Hospital and Health Care-Systems AdministrationEntrance Requirement: MBA or Master's in BME or MBBS.Courses: Hospital services, health services, medical equipment and technology, hospital economics and econometrics, health services economics and econometrics, systems engineering and operations research techniques, budget design and administration.Thesis: minimum 4 semesters residency.3. Combined M.D./Ph.D. (BME and health care-systems administration) degree program.Entrance requirements: MBBS degreeCourses: biomedical engineering processes, organ systems engineering, biomedical engineering techniques and informatics, artificial organs and assist devices, hospital and health services and econometrics.Thesis: minimum 4 semesters residency.For undergraduate students, there are several other program options as well, such as MDBS, combined MD-Biophysics, MD-Physics, BS biophysics, BSEE...ask your school if it's possible to have any of these distinctive combinations.If I wasn't so keen on my field work, I'd become a biomedical engineer. But as it is, I'm helping people better as a pure M.D. and learning did not end when I left medical school. Without a structured hospital setting, it's very important to have continuous learning experiences in the form of courses, conferences and on-the-job learning and improvisation as a field medic.Job Opportunities and Possibilities in the biomedical sectorBack to topAt the end of four long years of medical school, you find yourself standing at the threshold of graduation. There's just one hurdle that needs to be overcome before you start your journey in the real world--finding your dream job! Suddenly, you find yourself faced with lots of questions and the euphoria of graduation is subdued by the complexities of internship, residency and so on. Say you decide to stay in academics for a little while longer to become a biomedical engineer. What are the jobs of BME grads? Where are they? How should you find the job best suited to you? Should there be focus on securing a job in an established company or more importance be given to growth opportunities and responsibilities? I'll just provide an overview of some types of jobs available as well as some potential employees. Opportunities in the medical device industryThis is one of the bigggest employers of BME grads. Lots of new disciplines in medicine means many specializations, from design and development of devices to testing them and managing projects. Medtronics www.medtronic.com, the Microsoft of the medical device industry, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, offers a huge diversity of jobs. It was previously focusing on implantable pacemakers, but it has reinvented itself many times over to offer a wide range of products that alleviate pain, restore health and extend lives of people around the world. St. Jude Medical and Cardiac Rhythm Management unit of Guidant Inc., are also in Minneapolis. Both St. Jude and Guidant have a range of pacemakers and defibrillators, but they also make catheters, accessories for minimally-invasive surgery, heart valve replacement and repair products, and that's just the beginning.Lots of numerous medium and small-scale biotechs also make their presence felt from a Minneapolis base, making Minneapolis the "Medical (V)Alley". Not far from Minneapolis, there's GE Medical Systems in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Yup, Wisconsin's not just known for dairy anymore. For nearly 100 years, healthcare providers from ER to geriatrics/palliative care rely on GE Medical's X-ray imaging technology, angiography, cardiology, fluoroscopy, mammography, neurology, radiography, and surgery applications. GE Medical Systems is the leader in fMRI systems and applications and a leader in CT technology. They also develop better ultrasound products for radiology, cardiac, OB/GYN, urology, vascular, and breast imaging. GE Medical Systems is a leading provider of clinical services, servicing and maintaining all types of medical equipment. And to round it all off, GE also works on better PET systems. In the New Jersey-Boston area, there's Boston Scientific www.bsci.com. They are huge players in the cardiac electrophysiology product lines, with catheter-based solutions for cardiac tachyarrhythmia among many other things. They're leaders in minimally invasive and surgical devices for peripheral vascular disease management with a wide range of percutaneous biopsy devices, drainage catheters, vascular access systems, embolization therapy products for cancer patients, and, well, you get the idea. They're also a big maker of a full line of diagnostic and therapeutic products for endourology in the areas of stone management, incontinence and prostate diseases. Their microvasive endoscopy division provides devices for use in gastrointestinal endoscopic procedures. There also the interventional cardiology section and an endovascular neuro intervention section to treat diseases of the brain and other remote parts of the body in minimally invasive ways.Baxter www.baxter.com is a leading player in delivering critical therapies for life-threatening conditions relating to the blood and circulatory system. Their BioScience division makes products that collect, separate, and store blood as well as therapeutic proteins derived from blood. Their renal products cleanse the blood, their IV products infuse drugs and other solutions into the blood. The company provides IV and irrigating solutions in flexible plastics. Baxter also does a whole range of IV anesthesia devices, inhalation agents, anbulatory infusion systems, renal dialysis products and services to support people with kidney failure. Oh, and they're the world's leading guys of products for peritoneal dialysis (PD), a home dialysis therapy, and instrumentation for hemodialysis.The last two stalwart instrumentation company I want to zip over is similar to GE in scope, called Siemens Medical Systems www.sms.siemens.com, headquartered in New Jersey. They make and develop technologies in angiography, cardiology, CT, fluoroscopy, MRI, nuclear medicine, mammography, urology, RF systems, ultrasound, radiology, mechanical ventilation systems and a major innovator in patient monitoring systems. Siemens Hearing Instruments is a huge division, based in Piscataway, NJ, designs and making lots of different kinds of hearing aids and listening devices to improve quality of life of the hearing impaired. Other names such as Johnson & Johnson www.jnj.com is also (doesn't take three guesses) headquartered in New Jersey, and Abbott Laboratories www.abbott.com is headquartered in North Suburban Chicago; Agilent www.agilent.com is a spin-off from that Silicon Valley heavyweight Hewlett Packard; Beckton Dickinson www.bd.com; and Dade Behring www.dadebehring.com also offer a continuum of medical devices, services and pharmaceutical and healthcare products and drugs.So you're starting to get a picture of the non-frontlines side of medicine. It's detailed, analytical and a great outlet for your creativity in combination with your honed skills as a physician. But if working in industry makes you wrinkle your nose and whine, how about Opportunities in Hospitals.Many hospitals actively hire clinical/biomedical engineers for instrument development, testing and application analysis. They make sure clinical devices are safe, functional and always ready while developing and acquiring new devices, training physicians and other healthcare providers to use them, and investigating clinical incidents involving clinical devices, give manufacturers feedback about their devices, perform technical consultation in clinical areas, design, implement and analyze studies for product evaluations and trials. Academia, the National Institutes of Health and non-profit research organizations also eagerly look for BME grads. New fields like protein engineering and tissue engineering are leading the way in this burgeoning biotech sector. So if you're looking for ways to improve inefficiencies in hospitals, like to sink your teeth into a challenging problem, want a heck of a lot less paperwork, and like the idea of working with people in many different fields, interdisciplinary BME (that's redundant) is a way to take care of patients and provide yourself with monetary rewards and challenging career growth opportunities.Headed for Graduate School? Here's what you need to knowBack to topThanks to Jack Cheng, Shang Kai Gao, Frank Ngan, Jasmine Pui and Ling Feng Wen for responding tomy request for graduate school pointers. There are many ways graduate school and research are differentfrom medical school, internship and residency. So I've compiled their pointers below:Time Management in Graduate SchoolAll graduate students will agree that without sufficient self-motivation and drive, grad school can be a frustrating undertaking. Without direction and proper timemanagement, it's easy to let those deadlines slip by and the graduation date move further away from the horizon.In this short list of pointers is a compilation of do's and don'ts that may help you get through grad school in a smooth and efficient manner.It's important to realize, at the outset, that grad school requires a different mindset that undergraduate life or medical school. It requires more independent attitudes on thepart of the student: learning well beyond the confines of lectures and textbooks, to labs and literature where the student is free to delve deeply into the past and present of topics that interest them.Graduate school is also more similar to industry than medical or undergrad years, with goals and deadlines to be met, team efforts in problem-solving and accountability for the results. It can be verytaxing to juggle the myriad tasks to be performed if you're not properly organized and able to deal with a different kind of workload than medical school and undergraduate schools offer.The first semester can be very similar to the rest of your schooling, as (in most cases) you end up taking several classes and often don't have any responsibilities towards a research lab. You may be required to be a TA (teaching assistant), which adds several hours of work per week for instructing, reviewing with students and grading. It's a good idea to use this time to help in the decision of a professor and lab for which you'd like to work if you haven't already done so. It's helpful to meet with each of the research faculty to discuss ongoing projects and potential funding.Discuss options for pursuing a master's or doctorate degree. Once you've narrowed down the choices to a few options, attend lab meetings to get a feeling for how the lab is run, what the students and postdocs in the lab are like, and how the advisor interacts with them.Its also a good idea to schedule some more time with some of the students in the lab to discuss their experience. The tough courseload, TA work and these decisions will be plenty for the first semester.By the second semester, it's wise to select a research advisor and start working on a project of some sort. This project should preferably be something related to your area(s) of interest and should help give you a good exposure to the skills needed to work in that area. Often you may be teamed with a more senior student to learn the ropes of experimentationwith reference to the particular project you're assigned to, or preferably, one you chose. This semester needs additional effort in time management because the coursework load is still there, but now you have the lab and the project. You'll lose the sense of a burden when it comes to the extra work because you're likely to learn something new every day.It's important that you think about what you want to do after graduating. The earlier you decide this, the better, since there are many valuable resources available to help you succeed in reaching your goals. The most important of these is often your major advisor, which is why choosing one that will be able to help you as much as possible is so critical. Do noticeJC, SKG, FN, JP, LFW stressed that you choose your advisor; picking the right person to suit your needs is important.Getting back to the point we were making about deciding what you want your future to be early on, come up with a reasonable objective of where you would like to see yourself a few years down the line, and determine what skills you need to get there. Check if you're closer to that point every month and identify what you need to do to hasten that process.The second semester is also a good time to plan your PhD or master's program in a long-term way. This means learning about the requirements needed to complete the program, such as qualifying exams, degree plans, preliminary exams, proposal deadlines, and defense deadlines. They come up faster than you'd think! Discuss a target graduation time with your advisor and set milestones to be reached along the way.Resolve to stick to the schedule! Mark all these on a calendar and keep track of your progress. This helps you maintain focus throughout the entire program and prevents procrastination on your part. It may also help you make decisions about accepting additional responsibilities, conferences, etc., which may impede your work.After a year in grad school, you should find yourself immersed in a research project. Research comprises the most important and the most gratifying part of your graduate study. It is generally what you will be "known for" as opposed to the content of the courses you took. But it's very easy to lose focus and waste time if there is a lack of planning on your part. It may even lead to a very poor product and a whole lot of frustration.It's very important to structure your experiments or studies, split your project up into at least two or three complete projects, and work on each individually. Try to think of them as a "good trilogy", according to Lingfeng. "Each project stands on its own, but each is needed for the rest of the trilogy to make sense and be a really great piece of work." Often this division of labor helps you present at conferences and publish scholarly papers earlier, providingmuch needed international feedback, criticism and associations with others in your field of work. Ideas, suggestions and critiques from outside sources keep the imagination and motivation alive and often influence the future directions of your project, where you end up after grad school and so on.Grad school is a place where you not only focus on your research and gain expertise in the same place, but you can also add a great deal of knowledge to your database if you organize your time carefully. These additional skills are ones that are useful in the real world. It could be, in Frank's case, developing new fighter pilot physiological coping strategies for optimal performance as a junior Medical Flight Officer for the Chinese Air Force, or in Jasmine's case, applying her biophysics thesis to designing raceboats. With the multitude of responsibilities split between research, coursework, lab or teaching work, and independent study, it can be easy to lose balance in your life. You can get so focused on school that other important areas of life are neglected. If you have family, take time out to do things with them. Find time to enjoy hobbies and recreation; it helps keep labwork from becoming monotonous. It's easy to say but hard to do: exercise regularly, eat well and sleep as well as you can. These three things will help youdeal with the stress of grad school, if only because you make fewer mistakes when marking, or omit the need to repeat part of an experiment again.While you enjoy life as a grad student, remember "focus", "self-motivation", "drive" and "balance" are the keys to good time management and success in graduate school.Tips for writing a scientific paperBack to topIn the BME field, the best exposure of your experimental results and work is through publications in scientifc journals or through presentations in local as well as international conferences. The top-flight graduate students are again thanked for discussing what's important in a scientific paper.1. Identify your targetThe first thing to identify is probably in which journal you would like to publish your article. This is not as simple as it sounds, and it calls for very careful judgement based on the type of experimental work you have carried out. Each journal has a particular style of paper that it accepts, and choosing the wrong journal might mean not being able to get through the reviewers; thus the paper may not be accepted for publication in the timeline you're projected.To give some examples, if your article dealt with a clinical application of magnetic resonance imaging, your journal options for publication might be Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging or Magnetic Resonance in Medicine. If, however, the article concentrated more on development of a mathematical or electrical engineering result with lesser emphasis on the clinical application or the development of any new magnetic resonance sequence, IEEE would probably be a better choice for a journal in whichto publish the article. For applications of lasers in medicine, Lasers in Surgery and Medicine would be a journal of consideration. Another thing you might want to consider before publication is choosing journals according to the Impact Factor (IF) of the journal. In medicine, publication in the JAMA, the NEJM, the Lancet or the BMJ are about as big as impact factors can get. But the consensus amongst the grad students who provided these tips is that IFs are a very poor measurement of journal quality. IFs are a relative ranking of a journal's importance--it's the ratio of citations to the number of papers published. For example, the IF for the fake exemplarjournal "Wordy" in 1994 is calculated as the number of citations to papers published in Wordy during 1992 and 1993, divided by the number of papers published in Wordy during 1992 and 1993. So you can get a feel for the age/prestige of the journal, its circulation and relevance of any particular paper published in a journal by the number of times it is cited, and overall, and you can get an idea of how important Wordy is to a particular field by the IF. The IF is different depending on the field, so a weekly like the Lancet should not be compared to mathematics journals, nor with engineering, nor with biomedical engineering ones. Because circulation and frequency of publication is a large part of how IFs are determined, it's important to remember that the quality of journal articles vary over time, editors and reviewers, so you need not choose or accept publication in a smaller journal, or one with a lower IF, in a death knell position.The IF value is determined by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR), a periodical that compiles data from the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index.2. Get to know the publicationOnce you're decided what journal(s) you wish to publish in, it is a good idea to read a few issues of the journal to get a flavor of the style and format expected of articles. These days, you can also look at the journals' websites for 'Instructions for Authors' and read about the editorial focus and editorial board of the journal in question. There is usually detailed information about the addresses for correspondence, deadlines and fees on these websites if youcannot find these at the back pages of the print copy of the journal. 3.Get OrganizedThe next important step is to organize all the data and results you have and analyze them. This means generating all the plots and tables necessary to validate the objective of your research. Also at this stage put together all your reference materials neatly in a file and briefly write up methodologies used and details that may have been put down in your lab notebook. Another useful thing would be to have a couple of sheets that reflect all the weekly inputs you have received from your research advisors on your results.At this stage, the best thing to do is to briefly outline a story. It is always very helpful if one has a good idea of how the paper will read before sitting down to write details since there's a tendency to beat around the bush and miss conveying the point, thus resulting in a frustrating writer's block experience. The objective of your research and your contribution to the field should be well defined and validated. Once you have that jotted down, it's time to sit down and write/type that paper.4. Section by SectionMost papers have a generic format that consists of eight sections (be sure to check your particular journal for format instructions): Abstract, introduction, background, theory, materials and methods, results, discussions, and conclusions. Variations are common, but we're just discussing pointers here.The abstract is always written at the end after you ahve the entire paper ready. This section discusses in one or two paragraphs the results obtained in a way that can be compared to an advertisement that is meant to attract the attention of readers to your paper. So, important results and contributions are highlighted in this section.The introduction is the first section to attack since this section introduces the reader to your research, so it needs to be very lucid and complete and should be able to stand on its own. This should be written first as it's also useful to help you organize your thoughts better. The writer would invariably go back to the introduction after writing the entire paper and make changes to it, polishing off uneven edges. It's alsways helpful to address the following issues while writingthe introduction section: What is the need for your research? What are the past methods, what are their drawbacks, and how does your method overcome them? What is the principle contribution of this paper? Explain the method in brief and mention results obtained in brief.The background, as the name implies, is a presentation in brief of all the past methodologies and the research done by others in the direction of solving the same problem (or their misunderstanding of a concept, and thus, a poor job of investigating). It is critical to explain to others how your work fits into the context of the work of others, and what your work adds to the existing knowledge.Writing a good background section is not easy. It requires careful understanding of what others have done, grasping their methodologies and assessing their relative values. Only then can you judge or compare these methods with each other and to your own method. The beginning should be disarming, you cannot outright state how everyone else in the following references are dead wrong, and you're so completely right, if you want a reviewer to keep an open mind and consider what you're saying.So, spend time on this section and don't put it off till the end. It may not be your own work you are writing about, but it is always easier to write about your own work than what you have not done!The next section, which is probably one of the easier ones to write up, is Theory. This section just mentions all the supporting fundamental equations or theories that have been used for the research. It explains these in detail so the reader, without a specific background can understand the experimental procedure by reading this section and by reading other references mentioned in this section. Remember BME is a diverse and interdisciplinary field with people having many different varieties and depths of knowledge, unlike most others. You have to take for granted your reader won't know exactly what you're talking about!Keep in mind that although references in this section are mentioned, the material in the paper should be complete on its own and should not keep directing the readers to references without getting the point across. References are only for further investigations, if the pleases the reader to make such efforts.Specifications of the equipment used, software developed, and experimental procedures carried out are all documented in detail in the Methodology section of the paper. It is while writing this section and the next two sections that your lab notebook with be referred to the most. All the protocols followed before the experiment began, block diagrams of your set-up, and detailed spcifications of the equipment used (including its make) should be mentioned. If your experiment involved lasers, for example, then a mention of the wavelength used, the state of polarization of the light, etc., are worth mentioning. Any software developed to aid your experiments will need to be explained in detail either in this section or as a separate section. If your research involved contributing software, then the algorithm that was used, flowcharts and the modules developed, need to be explained in detail.Results is a compilation of all the important results obtained from your experiments and illustrates the key objective of the research. This is the most important section of your paper. Most of the work for this chapter should have been done in advance before setting out to write the paper. The analysis of the data and the generation of the necessary visualization tools to describe the same should already have been worked on. A neat arrangement of all the plots and tables in a proper sequence is to be kept in mind while writing this section.Discussions describes the results and makes comments on them, sometimes comparing them to past results and sometimes justifying past claims made in the paper. This section provides the reader with an essence of the results obtained in words, which complements the visual plots and tables presented in the results section.Conclusions derives the necessary conclusions from the results obtained. It is always helpful to write this section as though you were writing a point-wise precis and to mention at least two or three important conclusions. Another important thing that should be addressed in this ection is the future work that can be carried out to further improve the current methodology, if there are any limiting factors of the experiment and methodology, and if you are carrying out any steps to achieve the same.One part of writing a good scientific paper not previously mentioned is the presence of style. A good scientific paper conveys both the science and the primary scientist's personality.Wrapping it upFinally, remember to just keep it simple.The Graduate School Application ProcessBack to topWithout proper direction and planning, the process of applying for grad school can end up being very involved, chaotic and sometimes unfruitful. We hope we can bring some methodical order to the madness with this article!1. The preapplication stageThis involves picking up the skills necessary for graduate school. This process should begin 1 or 2 years before you wish to join graduate school. As a junior and a senior, one can get involved in a research lab and work on summer projects or in an industry setting as an intern. Each of the graduate students I chose above spent about an equal amount of time in the lab as they did lectures. The research experience will help familiarize you with the different areas of specialization in the industrial and academic settings. These skills are highly valued in the admission process to graduate school.This is also the time to start preparing for the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and the TOEFL (for international students). Details about the schedules, prep material needed and locations where the exams are offered are available at www.ets.org. This is a very useful site, and the grad students contributing to this article strongly urge you to go through it before you decide to take these exams.Another process that can be very involved is deciding which schools you need to apply to. The website www.whitaker.org/academic has a complete list of all the universities offering BME programs in the U.S. A brief profile of the research carried out at these universities are also mentioned. The university websites offer much more detail, and this should be a good way to generate 10 to 12 short-listed universities based on your preferences.We also strongly recommend finding individual webpages for professors and finding out more about their research. Reading journal articles published by them and the students they supervise would also give you a good flavor and insight of the type of work you would be involved in. If you were interested in gettinga master's with a non-thesis option, you would want to look at what courses are offered and what type of industry placements the students from the departments secure after graduation.Do not skimp on the time and effort spent selecting universities, as it can be very frustrating if you end up in a place that does not suit your interests. If possible, arrange to visit the schools and meet with different faculty. This is the best way for you to judge if you fit into the department and vice versa. Rankings of the universities with biomedical engineering programs can be obtained from the www.usnews.com website. Consider, however, how the information presented was produced! Finally, decide on five schools to which you will apply. Find the deadlines for application and mark your calendar.2. The application stageAt this point you should have received your GRE and TOEFL scores. You must have your scores sent to each university, ETS codes fot the different schools are available on the ETS website at www.ets.org.Most admissions departments require two sealed copies of your undergraduate school transcript, which reflects your academic standing. You could have these sent directly to the schools you are applying to, or you can include them in your application packet with the other material.The next important requirement is the letters of recommendation. Professors whom you have worked for or taken classes from, or supervisors from companies you interned with in the summer, are generally the people you should request recommendation letters from. Ask that your recommendation letters be sealed, signed on the envelope and returned directly to you.3. Statement of purposeThis is a short 300 to 500 word statement of your graduate goals and research interests to be sent to the graduate program to which you are applying.4. PortfolioSome schools strongly recommend preparing a portfolio approximately eight pages in length to show evidence of original work. It can be graphic or written material including engineering projects, fine arts, writing, projects from undergraduate classes, accomplishments from summer jobs, social or organizational achievements, etc. A single-page copy of your resume summarizing these achievements would also be useful to include.5. Application formsMost schools encourage you to use their online forms. If not, you can download the forms from the department websites and fill them out and wend them with your application packet. If the school does not have an online form, you will have to request for an application packet to be sent to you.6. Application feeVisit the university websites and find out what the exact amount is and don't forget to include the check fot that amount with your application packet!7. Financial AidMost departments support as many graduatwe students (especially PhD students) as possible through the award of teaching assistantships, research assistanships, tuition fellowships and partial tuition fellowships. Students beyond their second year of grad study are usually supported as research assistants by their research advisor. If however, you are unable to obtain funding from the university, listed below are some URLs of the different organizations offering financial support to grad students:National Science FoundationEligibility: U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status with no more than 30 units of grad work. $15 000 annual stipend plus tuition and fees - 3 yearsemail: nsfgrfp@orau.govNational Defense Science and Engineering FundEligibility: U.S. citizenship, not permanent residents. Fellows do not incur any military or other service obligation. $18000 to $20000 stipend (increases each year) - 3 yearsHertz FoundationEligibility: U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status. GPA 3.75 to 4.00, study must be concerned with application of physical sciences to problems as contrasted with work that extends to the basic physical sciences.Not application for joint PhD/professional degree. $25000 stipend for 9 months plus cost-of-education allowance - annual award renewable for up to 5 years.National Physical Science ConsortiumEligibility: U.S. citizens, preferably minorities and women, GPA 3.00 to 4.00. Current grad students at institution that offers a PhD in the students discipline are not eligible. $12500 stipend for 9 months in years 1 to 4, $15 000 in years 5 to 6 plus tuition; summer employment at a member company. Email: npsc@nmsu.eduDoE Integrated Manufacturing and Processing FellowshipEligibility: U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status who have received a master's degree or are admitted to a doctoral program. Does not support work towards a master's degree.$20000 annual stipend plus $15000 cost-of-education allowance up to 3 years.Whitaker Fellowship in Biomedical EngineeringEligibility: U.S. citizenship or Permanent resident status entering orn in first year of grad study who are pursuing a PhD in biomedical engineering or other engineering discipline with a concentration in biomedical engineering.$18000 annual stipend and $14500 for tuition and fees - 3 years.More information on additional financial resources available can be had at web.fie.com/cws/sra/resource.htm.Grad School from start to finish. What's the process?Back to topIn the bachelors degree program, you are given a very regimented core of material to learn. You, and all others in your degree program, must learn much the same things. It's a test that you need to pass, and in the process you will acquire the fundamental, or foundational, knowledge needed to succeed in your field. Note: the master's degree program tends to offer more freedom to pick your projects and/or thesis toics but the process is still well controlled.The Ph.D. program, however, is completely different. You are free to determine your coursework, your dissertation topic, your advisory committee, and you even have the freedom to crash and burn. In fact, many students get through most of the way and never finish. The term you usually hear for that is "I have completed all but my dissertation." It's used so often there's an acronym for it: ABD "All But the Dissertation."One of the reasons for the high number of incomplete doctorate degrees is because students don't understand the process. Ph.D. programs not only test your ability to do academic work, but also your ability and will to learn and play the game.What the Ph.D. is notThe grad/post-doc students helping me with this webpage strongly disagree with those who think the Ph.D. program is a way to escape the real world because you haven't decided what you want to do with your life yet. It's not strictly an academic game you can ace by spending more time in the lab and working than on classwork (Frank, Jasmine) or playing video games (Lingfeng). Persuading a committee of five people, probably with five different views on research, to agree on your choice of coursework is a skill that has industry written all over it. The politics and gamesmanship needed to get through the Ph.D. program is required daily in the corporate world. Ask QuestionsRemember that the failure to plan is a plan to fail. To develop a plan, you need to research the process. You need to talk to many people and try to determine how things truly work: the key is to look for the commonality among the many opinions given.Talk to your current or past professors; ask them about the degree program at the university where they received their degrees. Plan to visit a school and arrange to speak to several professors in your area of interest. You should also talk to the chair of the departments, the dean, and most importantly, the administrative assistants. And yes, talk to recent Ph.D. graduates from the program. It is rare for a school to have a documented process, other than to tell you when the fee deadlines are.Elements of the Ph.D. ProgramThe major elements of the typical Ph.D. program--in order of importance--are 1) the committee, 2) the bachelors degree, 3) the post-graduate work, 4) the qualifying exams, and 5) the dissertation. However, most students look at this list in the reverse order.The committee--This may seem like an odd starting point, but besides your coursework, this is the most critical element. Your work partially depnds on the committee, which is why it is first in our list. A Ph.D. committee is usually made up of five professors. Typically, the committee members will have Ph.D.s themselves and will work for the university. In biomedical engineering, usually one committee member is from the math department, and the other four from the medicine, physics, engineering and biophysics departments. The committee is critical to your success or failure. Here are two important, often unspoken and unknown facts about committees:1. You decide who is on your committee. 2. You should start deciding on your committee members as soon as possible. Often you will be required to choose the members before you start the Ph.D. program, but if not, do it anyway.The first one seems to throw people off. Lingfen discovered this fact known to the other two grad students on our panel by accident. He was brave enough to ask if he could change one of his committee members. (Yes, there is a one for one relationship between stupidity and bravery!). Youw ant to hand pick your members starting with your committee chair or advisor. Many will tell you the advisor is the dirver of the Ph.D. program, but this is not true. You are the driver. But the advisor is crucial.The advisor should have some expertise in the field you are planning to do your work. In addition, he or she should be someone you can work with--very well. Don't be afraid to talk to lots of people when considering an advisor, and sit in on a couple of his/her classes to see how potential advisors interact with students and take their questions. This is not time to be shy. If many grad students indicate that a particular person is hard to work with, or will drag your degree out forever, believe them.Once you have chosen your advisor, have that person help you choose the rest of the committee. By this time you should have some good ideas about whom you'd like to be on the committee, but check with your advisor. It's important that both you and your advisor can work with them. So if you get someone who thinks you're an idiot, or acts like it, or doesn't like your area of research or is just a plain old soured puss who should retire, you can't blame anyone but yourself.Some general guidelines for selecting committee members are:Be careful. Talk to candidates and make sure that they don't hve ulterior motives for being on your committee. E.g., they may want you to do their research and not yours, or they may be interested in destroying competing research.If there is an expert in your field but you are hesitant to pick that person for fear that you will not be able to defend your work--think again. If the person is an expert, someone will suggest that he/she be on your committee anyway. And, even if the person is not on your committee as your advisor, you still can use this expertise; that person can ask you tough questions, guide your research and still be a big help.Okay, none of this seems very academic. It seems more like you're choosing a board of directors for a company. But at the Ph.D. level of education, it's all business. You are the producer of the product, as well as the product itself.Bachelors degree--The academics start here. Upon entering the degree program, it helps if your undergraduate degree is in a closely related field as your Ph.D. If not, you may be required to take additional courses to give you foundation in the area. If this happens to you, don't fret. If you must take additional coursework, guess who decides what and how much--the committee. Suppose you have an undergraduate degree in history, and you're going for a Ph.D. in BME in routing patient information in multilingual petabit plus databases. However, for the past 10 years, you've sat on a networking standards committee, you developed and patented new networking technologies using your degree in history. The committee can still require you to take an "Introduction to networking" undergrad course. Common sense or not, they decide. So you see the importance of picking the right committee members to do what you want to do without having the frustration of taking courses you don't need.Post bachelors coursework--The Ph.D. degree does not take into account the masters degree. The only degree that counts is the undergraduate degree. All other coursework will apply to the Ph.D. Therefore, if you have any graduate coursework, take it to the committee. Once again, they decide how or if they will count this work towards the requirements for the Ph.D. If you are going for a masters degree and hope to get a Ph.D. later, start asking the Ph.D. questions now.A quick thought on getting a masters degree first: Since the entrance into a Ph.D. program usually does not require you to either have a masters degree, or to earn one in the process, some people (namely our grad student panel here) decide to go straight for the Ph.D. degree. The typical layout for the Ph.D. coursework in BME is:Major-24 semester hours, Minor Area One-1 to 12 semester hours, Minor Area Two-12 semester hours, Dissertation research-24 semester hours, Seminars-2 semester hours.This is what you will pay for. Obviously, you can have more hours in each one, and once again, your committee may tell you that extra courses are required.The 24 hours of coursework in the major area are courses that apply to your major field of study. So if you are going into hospital power systems control, your major might be a combination of courses on power systems, and your minor area might be in hospital administration. Yes, you guessed it, your committee decides.In BME, the minor area two is usually math. Depending on the school or committee, these might be pure math courses or applied math.The dissertation research is not really your dissertation. These are the credit hours you pay for while doing your dissertation (yes, this is the school's income). A few rules often apply as to how soon you can take these credits and how many you can take at a time. There are usually the rules of the university. One rule that seems to be typical is taht you must be registered for dissertation hours in the term taht you defend your dissertation.Qualifying exams--Once you have completed all your coursework (not your dissertation hors, but regular coursework), you will have the honor of taking a qualifying exam. Once again, procedures differ, and may be hard to find out about, but they do exist. This exam is usually written by the committee. It will cover all the areas of your coursework. Sometimes the committee will have the instructors write and grade the questions relevant to their courses.passing these exams is the first major hurdle towards getting the Ph.D. "But," you ask, "what about all that coursework I just did?" That was typical academic coursework. Anyone who holds a bachelors degree can do that. A second qualifying exam, often called the oral exam, is actually part of the dissertation process.Dissertation--When you think of Ph.D., you naturally think of dissertation. That is, the crowning achievement of the doctoral program. The process begins after your written qualifying exam. In actuality, many will have already begun their research at this point. When you get here, you need to reevaluate your position and your earlier decisions.First think about your advisor and your committee. This statement may not be popular in academic settings, but it is important to do. While not allowed by all schools, you can often change your advisor. Some may have made it easy by having left since you started your program. Either way, now is the time to review your advisor's comments and involvement. Do you think that you can continue to work with him/her? have there been any misunderstandings in the past that need to be cleared up? You may think your advisor is not that important now, so you may not be very concerned. But here is where your advisor and the rest of the committee become very critical. Make sure you clear up any previous misunderstandings now, or change your advisor or committee member(s).You need to ask them the following questions:1. What do they see as the proper form, and topics, of a Ph.D. dissertation?2. Do they think dissertation research should be more theoretical or practical?3. How many papers should be published before you defend your dissertation?4. Should they be conference papers or journal papers?5. How long should the dissertation take?6. Given what you have already done, how much further do you have to go?7. What flexibility do you have in doing the research? (Do they want to give you very specific directions or can you choose your own directions and outcomes?)These questions and their answers might give you some feel as to how the advisor and committee see the direction of your research. There are no correct answers here, but the answers should give you a feel for what they expect. If you feel your stomach churn as they speak, express your concerns frankly to them.In addition, we suggest you go and discuss the same issues with others in your area of interest. It is preferable to do this before you decide on your original committee, but we've found that when deciding on the coriginal committee, most rarely know the exact area of research.No matter what, I highly recommend you feel comfortable with these folks at this juncture. The advisor and the committee hold your academic career in their hands. If you are not comfortable, discuss your options with them. While this may seem radical, you are a valuable asset--if you actually finish. Universities with Ph.D. programs usually need to graduate so many Ph.D.s within a three year rolling average. If another school can steal you away at this stage, they will. At the very least, when you come back to your universtiy, you have a bargaining chip. In addition, you might vist the department chair and/or dean. While the committee members may not really care if you ever graduate, your chair and dean probably care an awful lot.A working plan for the AdvisorOnce you are content with the committee and your advisor, make some plans for managing the process. Here is a quick summary of Wanda Pratt's points:1. Insist on weekly meetings with your advisor--make sure these are productive meetings.2. Prepare for your meetings. Know what you need answered and what you want to discuss.3. E-mail your advisor a summary of every meeting. This is a great way to avoid misunderstandings.4. Show your advisor the results of all your work as soon as possible.5. Communicate. If you disagree with your advisor--let him/her know. Be respectful, but be straight.6. Take the initiative. It's all in your lap. If you never graduate, you advisor's job, pay raise, or career--is not at risk--unless one of your parents is the dean.Overall, your advisor is very busy and has other concerns. Although most will want to help you, this person is not in charge of your work. Unless you're being paid to do the advisor's research (i.e., you're the low-cost research assistant sans title) and counting it towards your degree, de considerate and do not go in just to marvel the floor tiles. Be prepared, get to the point and get out. This way your advisor will not dread meeting with you on a regular basis, even when he/she gets busy.The Dissertation ProposalThe first step in writing a dissertation is to carve out a plan of what you will research and write. Hopefully you have been planning all along and have already done parts of the research as part of your classwork. The statement that you will hear is that your work (dissertation) must "add to the body of knowledge." When you ask what that means, you'll almost never get a straight and concrete answer.You might see yourself coming in the door with some Nobel Prize-winning problem to solve that will change industry and society--we see someone who will never finish. Do your earth-shattering work later; get the degree first. You can do important work even as a bachelors student, as the members of our graduate student panel has proven. Our suggested approach seems a bit methodical for some, but it works:1. Pick a rough area that interests you and your advisor.2. Do a literature search on the topic and find five problems that interest you. These are easy to find since problems are what the papers are trying to solve. BME is full of problems, believe us! In addition, the conclusions of many papers and dissertations wil indicate future problems that need to be solved.3. Wirte them up in a short paragraph or two, with references, as if you were writing a short two-page dissertation.4. Take these to your advisor and discuss them. Out of the five, you should be able to agree on one as your area of research.5. Now, take this topic and reeat steps 2 to 4 until this topic of yours is sufficiently narrowed.The point of this exercise is to get you researching deeply. What is highly discouraged is Web scanning. You have to evaluate what the research community considers research papers to get a real topic.Once you get the topic narrowed and have a great feel for what you want to do, write up a three- to ten-page description of what you plan to do and the steps you plan to take. Make sure the committee understands where your work will end. For instance, if you plan to develop a theoretical or mathematical model of some system, make sure that you state that you are not going to develop a physical model from your theoretical model. Now, go and discuss your plan with your advisor.Most universities will want you to write up a history of the problem (a reference to all work previously done in this area) as well as description of your work. Some especially stringent programs, like the CERNET program our grad student panel went through required it for their undergrad theses. This write up also includes a description of your work. If you do this correctly, you should end up with 15-25 pages that make three or four chapters of the dissertation. They might be labeled:Chapter 1-IntroductionChapter 2-Literature review of previous workChapter 3-Motivation and goalsChapter 4-BibliographyThe goal is to be finished with the dissertation after you have done what you stated in the proposal. Therefore, make the goals and objectives very clear and make sure you can accomplish these objectives. Changing your goals later is going to be very difficult.Proposal Review and AcceptanceOnce the proposal is written, take it to your advisor for a thorough review. Also, take it to all of the committee members and if possible, to anyone who is an expert in the area that you can trust. The goal is to be sure that you are on target and have not aimed too high or too low. Make any modifications you need at this point until you, your advisor and other committee members are comfortable. Now, formally type up the proposal and deliver it to the committee. We recommend that you follow the guidelines of the university dissertation format for the proposal. This will make it professional, easy to read and, if accepted, these parts of the dissertation will be done.When you deliver the written proposal, set up a meeting with your committee for a date two weeks later. This will give everyone time to review your proposal--expect that someone on the committee will say, "I haven't had a chance to do more than glance at it..." but don't be disconcerted. Hold fast and make it clear before hand that you expect them to read it. Go to the department secretary and the department chair to make sure you have all the forms that you will need for your proposal review. This is sometimes called your oral qualifying exam. if your advisor is handling this, make sure nothing is left out. In fact, we recommend volunteering to do this for the advisor--after all, you care more than he or she does.When you formally present your proposal, there should be a few unexpected questions since the committee has already reviewed it and made comments. The committee members will be required to sign a form saying that they agree with your proposal--make sure you keep a copy for your records! You are now a doctoral candidate. More importantly, they have all agreed that when you complete all that you have proposed, then you will be finished.The Completed DissertationOnce your proposal has been agreed upon, take the initiative to schedule periodic reviews of your work. While not all of the committee members will give you feedback, or even read your work, do not give them the excuse that they were not informed, or they "lost" what it was they were supposed to review. Send them a schedule of when you plan to have the different parts of your work completed. In this, give the outline of the dissertaion chapters and the dates that you will deliver them. Send a copy by email as well as departmental mail to nullify excuses. We recommend asking the committee members to meet you at least four time during your work for feedback. The scheduling is your job. Delivering the copies is your job. Keeping them up-to-date is your job. If you go away and they never hear from you again, they will not fret overly much. By setting this schedule, you are givingt yourself deadlines and communicating with a committee that will often forget you exist. Don't worry about changing the deadlines and deliverables; this will happen, but keep them informed and try to make it a two-way dialogue. At this stage you have momentum, and do not let it get away from you (read our time management tips), or you will be forever ABD.Conference know-how[Posters or Lectures?] [Scooping out the takeaway statements] [Back to top]Posters or Lectures?Communication skills are important abilities for engineers for biomedical engineers to acquire. For instance, you might be sharing your ideas and projects' results with others in your field at professional meetings and conferences. Reputations and connections partially depend on getting the word out about your work. Simply building a better mousetrap won't get anyone to come to your door; you've got to have word-of-mouth advertising! The ability "to confer and confab" with others in your technical area is part of developing your career. This information exchange takes place both in written and spoken forms in presentations. Various methods of presentation are available, including lecture, poster, precis poster, slides, video and online demonstrations.Many professional societies have featured poster sessions successfully at conferences for many years. Often, student presentations, when features at professional technical meetings, are in the form of posters. Unfortunately, for some, the term "poster session" has a stigma attached to it. Some people think poster sessions are only for those who are afraid to speak in public. Others are of the opinion that posters are too time-consiming to prepare compared to a lecture or slides. However, these viewpoints are misconceptions.As we said, some authors are reluctant to select poster sessions as their first choice of presentation method. They are unfamiliar with the format and have not been sufficiently exposed to poster papers. So how do poster presentations compare to lecture presentations? Because of their temporal nature, lecture sessions run strictly according to the clock. Each presentation has a specific time slot and authors are strongly discouraged from speaking longer thant heir scheduled time allotment.In contrast, poster sessions are allocated a large overall time slot. This permits considerably more informal discussion, such as question and answer, for those more experienced in the field to make suggestions and give feedback on your work, than a lecture session usually allows.Generally, communication in oral presentations is mostly one way. However, communication exchanges can be much greater in poster sessions (do you see a bias here?). Some authors think the chief advantages of a poster session is personal contact and exchange of ideas, especially in new and emerging fields such as the grad students comtributing to this page are involved in.Although almost everyone uses visual aids in lectures, speakers include the slides or viewgraphs to support the lecture. Speaking is the primary mode of information delivery in lectures, and you must speak over noisy slide projectors. Not to mention, have you ever noticed that slide presentations are always at 8 o'clock in the morning, when everyone is bleary-eyed and jetlagged? A lecture can be delivered without visual aids, if need be, but in cross-disciplinary fields of BME, we recommend to use of visual aids if only because everyone attending the conference has many different levels of expertise. Trying to explain your method 50 times in the course of 1 hour can be exasperating without visual aids!Unlike a lecture, which is a temporal presentationl, a poster is a spatial presentation. The poster itself is the presentation. It should be constructed as a self-explanatory medium to stand alone with no verbal comments necessary. Verbal clarifications are included in the poster session to support the poster. In most cases, poster presenters need not prepare a short speech as part of their poster presentation; however, to get to most out of your time at conferences and get feedback, you should have a canned speech that's five minutes or less.A precis poster session is different in that prior to displaying their posters, authors are allotted five minutes each on the program to deliver an oral summary of their poster with up to five view graphs. This short lecture preview will stress the key points, such as results and conclusions. The idea is to encourage the attendee to visit that particular poster station. Unlike many ordinary poster sessions, precis presentations are grouped by topics. Occasionally, posters may be associated with more extensive lecture material presented by the same author at the same conference. In this case, the lecture-and poster-session portions of the presentation will be scheduled at different times. For example, at one conference, 40 posters from lecture sessions were presented.In some conferences, poster and lecture presentations are on an equal footing. Both are intended to describe the material in thepaper or abstract submitted for publication in the conference or meeting proceedings. The format for papers or abstracts in these conference proceedings is identical for papers presented in both types of sessions.In other cases, the format in the proceedings is different. Poster-paper authors are only allowed a one-page paper or abstract while longer papers are allowed for authors whom present their papers as a lecture. One conference draws an even sharper distinction. Technical papers are presented orally and more speculative, or untested, ideas are presented as posters. A poster session here is a forum for outlining novel ideas, techniques and methods. Thus, the presented concepts are not required to have gone through the level of rigor expected of technical papers.Viewers vs. audiencesLectures have audiences since people grasp the presentation by listening to the speaker. In contrast, poster sessions have viewers since the main mode of poster presentation is visual. However, this gives many conference attendees the opportunity to study your work before asking questions, giving comments and constructive criticism. For those interested in listening to others give feedback about your work, posters are the best medium.In a lecture, everyone hears teh presentation regardless of his or her level of interest. Some people in the audience are very interested in the topic, whereas otehrs wish they were elsewhere. In contrast, only those interested in the topic will spend considerable time reading and observing a poster-those whose feedback would be most valuable to you. Viewers who are only casually intersted in the paper will glance at the material, perhaps ask for clarification, and move on. A poster session provides the opportunity for more in-depth discussions with colleagues of like mind.The lecture format is designed to accomodate many listerners simultaneously. Thus, lecture audiences ten to be larger than the typical groups of viewers at poster-session. However, poster viewers can compensate for their smaller numbers with higher quality dialogue.A significant advantage of poster sessions is that viewers can absorb ideas at their pace and not at that of the presenter. This differs sharply form audiences in oral presentations who may become lost early on because an important point did not receive sufficient definition and clarification. The poster format provides a closer and more informal interaction between the presenter and viewer.General information and recommendationsNational and international meetings and conferences with very large attendance have several poster sessions per event. Organizations that hold these large meetings regularly feature many poster sessions, whereas other conferences, colloquia and symposia include at most one poster session per event.How do you tell the difference between a conference and a symposia? Conferences are designed to accomodate a larger group. A colloquium traditionally has been defined to mean usually an academic meeting in which one or more specialists delivers addresses on a single topic or on a group of related topics and then answers questions relating thereto, similar to a retreat. Some colloquia that have poster sessions also have about the same number of attendees as a symposium, between 100 to 300.Whether or not a psoter session is available at a meeting depends on the meeting's attendance size. Small meetings, such as workshops sponsored by a BME society, do not include poster sessions in the program. Some meetings or conferences with medium to large attendance feature only one poster session. Typically each poster-paper author is allowed one poster station unless the rules state otherwise. Due to logistics of poster sessions, most organizations allow only one poster per principal author per poster session. Conference organizers usually provide for each poster station or booth a vertical poster board for displaying a summary of the paper. In many cases, the poster board is four feet (122 centimeters) high and eight feet (244 centimeters)long. However, this is not always the case. Easels have been known to be used!At some conferences and colloquia, each poster station will also have a horizontal table and a chair, if space permits. Poster-paper authors can place handout material, business cards and any electronic equipments on their table. You should bring copies of your data, conclusions and some of your reprints that you wish to hand out. They should not assume duplication facilities will be available, and handing out such material leads to others in your field citing your work more often than not.You can also use the table to provide a sign-in sheet of sorts, to record names, email addresses, phone nubmers, etc of viewers who visit your poster. After all, not everyone will be as foresighted as yourself and bring business cards with the necessary contact information with them :). This sign-in sheet is a convenient way to provide these viewers additional information, such as reprints or other literature at a later date, and to maintain email correspondence as you work on your thesis and smaller projects. Note: sign-in sheets are best if they are printed in advance on a word processor prior to the poster session instead of handwritten.Poster presenters who wish to collect your viewers' business cards can provide a labeled container, a box or can on the table or then can pin an envelope onto the poster board and label it business cards. During the initial setup of the poster hall, tables are placed in front of the poster boards. During the final setup, the poster presenters may arrange your tables in any convenient configuration that suits your presentations. Some poster presenters want the audience to be able to get close to your posters. In this case, you can place the table to the side of the poster, perpendicular to it to facilitate access.At some poster sessions, space may not permit the use of such a table at each poster station. Therefore, authors should inquire in advance from the meeting organizers as to the availability of such tables for each poster. Unfortunately, there's no uniform standard poster size across all organizations, societies and individuals. Some posters are in a landscape format, 8 feet(244 centimeters) wide and 4 feet (122 centimeters) tall. Some are 3 feet (90 centimeters) wide and 4.3 feet (130 centimeters) high, the portrait format, and others still are 3 feet wide (92 centimeters), 4 feet (122 centimeters) tall. Each organization sponsoring an event with poster sessions will specify poster dimensions and notify poster-paper authors about them in advance. Although lamination helps to preserve to poster if you're bringing it to several conferences, the grad students helping me with this article don't recommend it due to the lighting at most conferences. The glare and reflections from the lamination process is highly unattractive and makes the poster difficult to read when there are many viewers at your poster (hopefully), so the viewers can't move freely to avoid the text-and-visuals-disfiguring glare.Prior to the presentationTrue, you probably need coffee, but don't forget some other things too. All illustrations, charts and text material to be posted should be prepared in advance. The authors should not assume materials for putting your presentation together are available on site. Generally, poster presenters can mount their previously prepared poster material on the poster board using thumbtacks. Some thumbtacks, push pins, masking tape and/or velcro and felt tipped pens may be available. We suggest lining the edge of your poster with clear tape to prevent ripping or otherwise damaging it if the masking tape doesn't hold, and to prevent trouble removing the tape at the end of the poster sessions. The heading will be the title of the paper. A heading whose letters are at least 1.5 inches (3.81 centimeters) high is very desirable. However it may be difficult or incovenient to do with common software. For example, a capital letter in the Times 96-point font measures about 7/8 inches (2.22centimeters). This may be the largest size available from some slide presentation softwarea nd word processors. In this case the graphics or computing science departments of your organization may be able to assist. Illustrative material should be legible to viewers from a distance of 3 feet (92 centimeters) or more. So, try to make your lettering on illustrations at least 3/8 inches (0.95 centimeters) high. Most word processors accomodate this dimension. However, if you can't construct your poster easily using these guidelines, the printed material should be as large as possible. Also, the poster station will need to be configured to allow tht viewers a close approach to the poster. You might think this is obvious, but you'd be surprised what you see at many conferences!The poster title, author(s) and affiliation(s) with logos can be posted at the top section of the poster. Illustrations should not be pre-mounted on heavy stock. This may make them difficult to mount on the poster boards. But if you have used a certain kind of background stock to mount material successfully in previous poster sessions, stick with what works for you.Most meeting organizers strongly recommend authors determine the layout of items to be mounted before the meeting. This will facilitate final construction of the poster. Each sheet should be numbered in the sequence in which the viewers should read the material. This sequence should contribute to the logical development of ideas and results you're trying to get across to the viewer. One way is the divide the poster presentation into sections: introduction, materials and methods, results and conclusion.Another technique is to prepare a scale drawing of the poster and rearrange it until it works. Color background material, eith from paper or cloth, is welcome if it helps with the visual impact, suitability, professionalism, legibility and logical train of thought in the creation of the eye-catching poster.FlexibilityAlthough posters don't have to look like works of art, you can improve their effectiveness by considering their graphic impact. Ease of reading and simplicity are more important than artistic flair, these goals need not conflict with each other. But, try to avoid certain color combinations that look great at close range, but are impossible to read at a distance.Most organizations don't restrict font or color schemes that you could use as long as the material is legible. For example, in past poster sessions, black and dark blue lettering have been easier to read than red, yellow or light green on a white background. White on black works but it's more difficult to manipulate.Some poster presenters find it best to use all 8.5 inches (21.6 cm) by 11 inches (27.5 cm) sheets of paper on their posters. Ling Feng created an extremely effective, award-winning poster from a single 8 foot (244 cm) by 4 foot (12cm) specially prepared sheet of cardboard. It was multi-colored and foldable because he had more than one conference to visit. Frank also had an unconventional poster that was very effective and professional; he used four 11 inch (27.5 cm) by 17 (43.2cm) sheets and several 8.5 inch (21.6cm) by 11 inch (27.5cm) sheets with color backgrounds. Laptops demonstrations are becoming more common in poster sessions that have enough room for tables. If an author wants to present a demonstration using a laptop computer or someother electronic device, the organizing committee will need to know well in advance. They need time to be able to arrange the poster board and table in the vicinity of a power outlet.If you'd like to use a blackboard during the poster session, this should be requested in advance, but most of the time, the mess and dust isn't worth it.Poster sessions are particularly suited for a presentation with detailed diagrams and flowcharts that cannot be restricted to one page. Whereas rectangular material usually is the most covneient to use on posters, any shape is allowed. In any case, much more detail is permitted in a poster session than is acceptable in the lecture format.On the day of the sessionAuthors should mount their poster material during the time allotted by the organization sponsoring the meeting. Generally, there's about a half-hour prior to the opening of the poster session. Show up early to set up wit ample time to spare and with all the necessary materials, including a ruler or tape measure to make sure your poster is on to poster board straight! This time mindset also helps when an extra chair, extra cup of coffee or electrical outlet that's supposed to be there is missing. Unless told otherwise, poster-paper authors should be around the vicinity of their posters at least 90 percent of the time the poster session is conducted. For papers with multiple authors, at least one author always should be present to answer questions. Oh, by the way, bringing a laser pointer with you is optional but does help when answering questions about your poster given the lighting conditions of many poster sessions! Bring a map or art case with you so you can roll up that huge monstrosity of a poster and sling it over your shoulder instead of ripping it.You're also responsible for removing the materials from your poster stations within a reasonable amount of time after the session's conclusion, and you're usually given 30 minutes to do it. Scooping out the take-aways at all sorts of presentations at conferencesBack to topSome folks call it the take away, others call it the trailer, r theme statement. It's a technique that drives home the message of each slide and briefing. Whether you're using Powerpoint(tm)or your voice or blackboards, the take-away focus is an enhancing skill for helping your listeners produce professional presentations by staying in tune with the basics regarding content and purpose.You've got to ask yourself, "What is the message that I want to leave with the audience?" This forces you to look at whether each bullet leading up to the take-away is supportive and each slide or point is congruent with the overall theme,. If you can't justify the slide or point with the purpose or the theme, you can toss it out. This is a great way to reduce the number of slides by an average of 25 percent.So you want to be clear, brief yet informative? Here's how to keep audience confusion at bay--remember they have just one chance to hear you talk. So find out how to tell them what you're going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you've told them, AND tell them why what you said was important.1. Analyze your audience-What are your different kinds of listeners?-How much do they know about your topic?-What actions do you want them to take as a result of your presentation?-What would it take to get those actions?Briefings that don't address real people rarely get the desired response.2. Structure your communication-Focus on your audience-Focus on the situation-Focus on the actions you want to happenFirst answer the question, "Why am I making this presentation?" not "what am I going to say?"3. Outlining-Clear organization-Encourage multi-level detail-Manage your thinkingStart with one overriding point, identified in the focus statement, and written out at the top of the outline4. Strategic questions-What do I want to accomplish?-How should I deal with, or adapt to my audience?-Relatively high in the order of knowledge?Summarizing the bullets on each slide, the take-away is truly a "statement about your statements".Got Presentation Skills?1. While presenting, be it at a podium in a conference in front of a huge audience, or in a research group meeting in front of your friends, it is always best to present a cohesive appearance, with controlled energy. Make it a point to always listen attentively to any questions directed to you, so you don't have to ask anyone to repeat the question.2. Always make eye contact with all members of the audience. Observe your audience and make adjustments to your talk based on their facial expressions. If you think they are not following you, try to slow down the talk and try to use examples to get the point across. Remember, the objective of a talk should be to get across to the audience and not to appear smarter than them.3. A good posture is a must when presenting. Slouching indicates a lack of self-confidence and makes the audience doubt your content. Some people also tend to move when they are nervous, which can be very distracting to the audience. Facial expressions and hand gestures can sometimes do wonders in accentuating your words.4. A monotone voice with no modulations can be very boring to listen to. Remember to vary not only the tone but also the volume and the pace, complementary to your speech.5. Diction: It's not a matter of being able to use flowery language and speak Oxford English. It's more important to be clear and precise with unforced enunciations.6. Your talk should flow and should seem to have a purpose. It should have an objective, you should talk about how your objective has been realized, and then it should have a conclusion. Don't beat around the bush--keep the talk as simple as you can.7. Always use examples to illustrate your ideas, and make them appear as if they are made up on the spur of the moment.8. You need to use visual aids; a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.9. Finally, and most importantly, rehearse your talk aloud as if there were an audience present--at least three times, if possible, and time your talk.Useful links for grad students and grad student wannabesFind out how to be a great grad student. Everything from choosing an advisor, to dealing with daily workload and choosing a thesis.Dan Horn's collection of grad student links, much-needed humor included.Scott Keagh's collection of grad student resourcesAnd because electrical engineering and computing science is a big part of BME, here's Tom Finin's advice and resources for EE and CS grad studentsmecca.org's definition of BME, and what it's all about. A nice overview of different aspects and interests.Wanda Pratt's tips on staying on top of your game, a Stanford websiteTruly required reading if you're considering graduate school from www.phds.orgFrom the University of Arizona, links for both advisor and grad studentMarie Desjardins advice and paper available in a variety of formats hereFor a mediterranean perspective, Vasili has compiled lots of links for those who find writing and conversing in grad-speak English a challenge.[Email me] [Back to top] .adHeadline {font: bold 10pt Arial; text-decoration: underline; color: blue;}.adText:link {font: normal 8pt Arial; text-decoration: none; color: #666666;}.adText:hover {font: normal 8pt Arial; text-decoration: underline; color: #330066;}.adText:visited {font: normal 8pt Arial; text-decoration: none; color: #666666;}div#fhp { width: 728px; height: 90px; border-style: dotted; border-width: 2px; border-color: #990099; margin: 0px auto 0 auto; padding: 0px 5px 5px 5px; position: relative;}div#fhp a.left { font: bold 8pt Verdana; text-decoration: none; color: #888888; position: absolute; left: 5px; bottom: 2px;}div#fhp a.right { font: bold 8pt Verdana; text-decoration: underline; color: #888888; position: absolute; right: 5px; bottom: 2px;}Sponsored LinksYour Ad Here    JJ_reset()var dc_UnitID = 14;var dc_PublisherID = 3803;var dc_AdLinkColor = 'blue';var dc_adprod='ADL'; |
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