Final Presentation

Everyone presents at the end of the fall and spring semesters.

Upload for peer review by:

  1. December 5, 2025 in the fall

    File Name: FA25_FinalPres_yourfirstandlastname

  2. April 25, 2026 in the spring

    File Name: SP26_FinalPres_yourfirstandlastname

You’ll be assigned 3 peers to review sometime during finals (watch Slack for the review assignments)

Upload your final presentation–both video and ppt–(Also upload to your individual folder in Box).

Examples (these are largely single project ppt slide examples and do not have the voice or video recording)

Oral Presentation section of Research Guide

What type of presentation is it?

In the fall and spring, your final presentation should be a 5-min, dynamic visual abstract-style presentation of the work you completed that semester with voice over or embedded screen capture of you presenting.

A dynamic visual abstract is a high-level, easily digestible summary of a study or project in presentation form that incorporates all of the typical sections of a research presentation (background, approach/methods, results, conclusions, future work), but with some slight tweaks to make the presentation more approachable (see Oral Presentation section of Research Guide for more details).

What to include?

You should start by introducing yourself and your project. Your first slide (this is your actual visual abstract) should have 3 parts that give a visual overview of your overarching project: background, methods, and results. After showing this slide, you may show slides dedicated to each of those parts. You may want a slide to comment on your future work as well. Show your visual abstract slide again to conclude. Invite questions at the end and specify how you’d prefer your reviewers to ask them (through Slack, the feedback form, etc.). See the Oral Presentation section of Research Guide for more details.

Header/Footer – should be on every slide

  • Title

  • Authors (you first, your PI last)

  • Logos (your labs, SyBBURE’s, maybe Vanderbilt’s, but watch that it doesn’t get too cluttered)

Background/Motivation – why does this research matter?

  • Your overarching project question or problem (with images)

  • The importance of this question/problem

Methods – what will you do to answer your overarching question?

  • Your proposed approach/methods (with images)

  • Rationale behind your proposed approach/methods

Results – what did you accomplish or discover?

  • Show us your data in understandable figures

  • Explain your main findings/conclusions

Conclusions & Future Work

  • What are the key takeaways? (If someone only sees this slide, will they be able to understand the current state of the project and what you accomplished?)

  • What will you do next?

References

  • Aim for 5-10 references

  • You may list references with just the first author and year of publication if you are tight on space (ie, “[1] Wikswo et al., 2025”)

Format

  • 5-min pre-recorded video presentation

  • dynamic visual abstract style (see Oral Presentation section of Research Guide for more details)

  • widescreen format

  • roughly 5 slides

  • use additional slides instead of animations (unless you are really good at them)

  • avoid excessive field-specific jargon, abbreviations, and acronyms

  • add either your voice narration using PowerPoint or a screen capture of you presenting embedded in your PowerPoint

  • submit both your video and PowerPoint slides