A collection of advice about how to do research and how to communicate effectively, from MIT AI Lab.

Tips for talk: an excerpt from a top technical recruiter in a leading telecom R&D company

You will have a varied audience. As far as the talk, a 4-part structure works best:

You need to establish the motivation for the work:

• Why is the question/problem important
• Why existing solutions are not adequate

Most talks then go into a new insight that opens a new approach.

• What is the new insight?
• What is the new approach?

Next there is a formal description of the new approach/methodology/algorithm.

• High level with highlights of key steps. No need to do math.

Finally there is performance evaluation

• How good is the new solution
• So what? This is quite important to understand the impact /value of the contribution.

This type of talk can be educational to the non-experts as well as of interest to the experts.