Check out my blog post about the process of organizing and executing WiSci's recent professional development symposium! http://wisciuga.weebly.com/blog/reflections-on-wiscis-first-professional-development-symposium

I recently gave a guest lecture (my first!) in Dr. John Maerz’s First-Year Odyssey Seminar, “Odyssey Into the Natural Sciences.” All freshmen are required to take one of 300+ FYO seminars, which are kept small (15-18 students) to promote student-faculty interaction. My prompt was to talk about emerging infectious diseases and the work I do with bats, in a 50 minute time slot. At first glance, this seemed like a fairly straightforward task, but I recognized some potential difficulties. Most of my experience in giving presentations is to ecology or disease-minded scientific audiences (MS/PhD holders and seekers). These talks are usually brief (10-20 minutes) and follow a typical outline: intro, methods, results, conclusions. For this talk, I had no idea what the scientific background of the students would be, so I didn’t want to get bogged down in data-heavy slides. Instead, I wanted to paint a picture of what it’s like to work in my system and some of the questions that we ask. Additionally, since this would be a longer talk, I needed ways to keep the students engaged as I spoke. Finally, I wanted to keep in mind the FYO goals (from the Faculty tab on the website):

• Goal 1: Introduce first-year students to the importance of learning and academics so that we engage them in the academic culture of the University.
• Goal 2: Give first-year students an opportunity for meaningful dialogue with a faculty member to encourage positive, sustained student-faculty interactions.
  
• Goal 3: Introduce first-year students to the instruction, research, public service and international missions of the University and how they relate to teaching and learning in and outside the classroom so that we increase student understanding of and participation in the full mission of the University.
  

My advisor gave me tips on how to structure my talk: start with a compelling hook, like the trailer for the 2011 movie Contagion, then broaden out to the larger picture of emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), how a lot of these have a zoonotic origin (i.e. from animals), and why we are seeing more in recent years. This would give us a common vocabulary to then explore the rest of my talk, about Hendra virus emergence and the work I’m doing as part of my PhD research. I wanted this section to be a little more personal, by sharing my first-hand experience of field and lab work in Australia.

Using these tips, I developed a draft presentation that included lots of bat photos and a couple videos. I practiced the talk with my lab group, who gave me great feedback about where I could insert questions for the students to get them to think critically about the information I was providing (Goal 1: check) and maintain their attention over 50 minutes. They also pointed out areas where I was slipping into scientist mode, either by lapsing into jargon or not giving enough details to make a link clear. One lab member suggested including slides showing the departments we have at UGA working on wildlife, infectious disease, and public health (Goal 3: check).

Giving my actual presentation to the class went well. The students responded when I asked questions, and based on eye contact and head-nodding, seemed to follow along with what I was saying. At the end, they had a lot of questions for me, especially about the Henda virus—flying fox system and working in Australia. Hopefully I’ll get the chance to do something like this again soon, to keep sharing my research and practicing my communication skills!

At the ESA 100th Annual Meeting held recently in Baltimore, I gave an Ignite talk as part of a session on heterogeneity in wildlife disease ecology organized by Shweta Bansal. It was the first time I had given one of these talks, and I would guess that most other presenters hadn't given one before either. ESA introduced Ignite talks (although not the concept) at the 98th meeting (2013), so they're still relatively new. These talks have a strict format: 20 slides that auto-advance every 15 seconds, for a total of 5 minutes. In the email advice that was sent to presenters, ESA recommended that we watch other Ignite talks to get an idea of what to expect. I liked several of the suggested videos (especially the one on Fighting Dirty in Scrabble) but had trouble finding ones given by scientists. Googling "how to give a scientific Ignite talk" helped me find some general tips on preparation, but again, little in the way of tips from/for scientists. So here are my thoughts, two weeks now after my presentation, in the hopes that it might help future ESA or other conference presenters.

• You should probably give up on the idea of presenting data.  In a typical scientific presentation, you're expected to show data slides--figures, graphs, equations, etc. The problem in an Ignite talk is that there just is not enough time. When I was making a rough draft of my slides, I wrote out the ideas that I wanted to convey on each slide. But once I started practicing, I realized that I had time for just two sentences per slide (and that was speaking at a faster than usual pace). In the end, I included just one slide containing a figure from a paper. I was able to explain it in two sentences, otherwise I would have had to scrap it. Any complex analysis is definitely out.
  
• Instead, use lots of photos, and minimal text. Once I stopped stressing about presenting data, I was able to focus on ideas instead, and how I could illustrate my ideas with pictures. I always feel lucky in that I work with a charismatic study species in the field, so it's not difficult to find captivating photos. Apart from my title slide, I included text as little as possible. I did make an exception for my 11th slide (halfway through), which was my only all-text slide. I used this slide to reinforce my main question, and to allow me to breathe (really, it's hard).
• Avoid animations. It's hard enough to practice 15 second timings. When you add in animations that start on the 3rd second, or the 10th second, I think it gets too complicated. Reduce the amount of thinking you have to do by having static slides.
  
• Practice much more than you would for a normal talk. In my experience, scientists are busy people, which sometimes means that presentations are being put together and practiced (or not) until the last minute. Part of this comes from knowing that even if you stumble a little in your talk, you have 15-20 minutes (for a normal talk), and you'll be able to find your place again, or rephrase something if it doesn't come out quite right. In an Ignite talk, there is no room for error. You can't afford the time it takes to repeat one sentence, or otherwise you'll be playing catch up with your next slides. So I practiced...a lot. It took me hours to get through the first half of my presentation successfully. For some reason, the second half came together much quicker (although maybe I was just exhausted at that point). Some of the online advice I found said to not get caught up in the exact phrasing for each slide, and to rather have a point that you want to get across. This didn't work for me--I practiced until I had the phrasing down pat each time. It got to the point where I think I could have given the script of my talk, without the slides behind me, in the correct 15 second intervals. I even ran through the whole thing in my head when I woke up at 3:30 am with presentation anxiety. The upside of all this practicing was that when I gave my talk for real, I was able to run on a combination of autopilot and adrenaline. The five minutes passed in a total blur.

One more thing that I think would help future presenters: (if people are willing to share) ESA should start videotaping Ignite talks and posting them to the Ignite website. When preparing, I would have liked seeing how other scientists approached their talks. Maybe others have found successful ways to incorporate data (perhaps by "hacking" the format, e.g. repeating a slide to give yourself more time, although ESA told us not to).

I recently had the chance to volunteer at the Tolga Bat Hospital, which was a great experience and a nice complement to my field work. Located in Atherton, Queensland, the bat hospital provides care for injured, ill, and orphaned megabats and microbats in the Far North QLD region (and sometimes further away). There is also a visitor center associated with the bat hospital which allows tourists and local citizens alike to learn about and observe bats. Jenny Maclean, with the help of volunteers, runs the facility and has done so for the past 25 years. This work requires an incredible commitment of time and energy; the bats are lucky to have such a champion as Jenny.

During my week at the bat hospital, I helped with a variety of tasks. But since my experience is with flying foxes, I spent most of my time in their enclosure. There are about 100 adult flying foxes held in permanent care, often due to injuries that leave them unable to fly, or other conditions that would make it difficult for them to survive in the wild (i.e. blindness, cleft palate). Many activities revolved around feeding the bats--chopping and stringing up apples, hanging bird feeders packed with banana, filling small containers with banana smoothie and chunks of soft fruit, and hanging bottles of fruit juice supplemented with nutritional pudding. The bats subscribe to the philosophy of "easy come, easy go," so the remains of all of this food have to be cleaned up each morning. The copious amounts of spats (chewed, discarded mouthfuls of fruit that have had the juice sucked out), feces, and urine are scraped up and distributed into on-site worm farms. Then everything is hosed down, clean and ready for the bats to make a new mess. They get great room service!

From 3-6pm, the visitor center is open for tours.  A tour starts with a video introducing the work that goes on at the bat hospital, and then continues with a trip around to see all the bat enclosures (microbats, juvenile flying foxes, adult flying foxes, and the nursery). I was able to lead the flying fox portions of the tour. Normally I find public speaking to be stressful because I don't like when everyone's attention is focused on me. In this case, visitors were usually so engrossed by the bats that they only paid peripheral attention to me. Invariably during a tour at least one of the flying foxes would demonstrate their habit of flipping right side up (hanging with their thumb claws) to urinate/defecate, which always caused excitement.

In my last post, I described how we capture flying foxes, but didn't get into what we actually do once we have caught them! So here is an update on that aspect of my work.

The first step is putting the bat under anesthesia. Flying foxes are VERY squirmy, and it is safer for everyone to have them sedated while we are taking samples. We use inhalant isoflurane administered through a mask, which will usually put a bat to sleep in just a minute or two. The hardest part is actually finding the bat's head while it is still in the pillowcase, and placing the mask on top. Sometimes you will wonder why a bat is taking longer to go down than usual, and then you'll realize that you've been trying to anesthetize its rear end. Once the bat's legs have gone limp, we take it out of the pillowcase and start collecting data.

The first things we measure are individual characteristics of the bat, like its species, sex, and age. We also measure its weight and forearm length as indicators of its condition. Then we start taking samples; for my PhD research, this includes fur, urine, and blood. Each of these samples can tell us different things about the bat it came from (topics for another post...).

Once we have recorded all the information we need, we place the bat back into a clean pillowcase. We make sure that it has recovered from the anesthesia before releasing it back into the colony. Flying foxes cannot take off from the ground, so they need to be either released directly into the air or onto a tree. An air release means holding the bat as high up as you can with your gloved hand, otherwise it will try to climb up to the highest spot (i.e. your head). A tree release involves finding a rough tree trunk that the bat can grab onto with its claws. Bats are great climbers, and will quickly scramble up high before flapping away (likely a bit perplexed about what they have just experienced, but none the worse for wear).

I’m currently in Queensland, Australia conducting my first field season as a PhD student, so I thought I’d share one of my main activities while I’m here—catching the native flying foxes. Usually when I tell people I catch bats, I get a lot of confused looks, sometimes accompanied by a pantomime of waving a butterfly net back and forth in the air. Well, you’d need a pretty long net to catch these bats, which are flying at the height of tree canopies. Instead, we use something called a mist net—a black mesh net strung up between two poles (or tall trees, if there’s no room for poles) about 12-18 meters apart. The net is attached with a pulley on either side, and can be raised and lowered by two people, each standing at a pole.

To use a mist net effectively, it has to be placed across the path of the flying foxes as they are coming back to the roost after a night of foraging. Flying foxes have good eyesight, but it is hard for them to spot the net on a dark night. When the moon is bright, you will see more bats flying over or around the net, although there always are some that still get trapped. We usually set up the net the day before we want to catch, in order to place all the ropes and clear any debris that might trip us.

Bats usually fly back to the roost before dawn, so catching always involves getting up early—most recently 4 am on our last catching trip, but it can be even earlier depending on when sunrise is. Using our headlamps to guide us, we string the net across and raise it up, waiting for the bats to arrive. At the beginning, there aren’t too many bats around, but the pace picks up rapidly as the bats start to come back to the roost en masse. Everyone on the team (ideally, at least four of us) stares up at the sky, waiting for a bat to fly into the net. As soon as that happens, everyone turns on their headlamps and springs into action. The two people operating the net raise it down to around waist height. One handler, who has big gauntlets on, grabs the flying fox by the back of its neck so that it can’t bite anyone. This is harder than it seems, because often the neck is obstructed by netting. Once the head is secured, the other team members can go in and start untangling the bat’s claws and wings from the net. Flying foxes have very long, sharp claws, and can get tangled very quickly, so this step requires delicate fingerwork. Remarkably, most bats don’t squirm or make too much noise while this is going on. I’m not sure if they are just stunned by having big creatures point headlamps in their eyes, or understand that you are trying to untangle them, but it makes things easier. As pointy bits of the bat get freed, the handler tucks them under the big gloves so they can’t reach out and scratch anyone. Eventually, once the bat is completely free, the handler quickly releases it into a pillowcase held by another team member, which is subsequently tied closed and hung off a branch. Even a feisty bat will usually calm down at this point, as it can hang from the top of the bag in darkness and security.

To be continued...