Presenter information
Cosyne is an inherently interdisciplinary meeting, and its success relies on the effort that participants make to communicate across disciplinary boundaries. These include neurobiology, psychology, medicine, physics, engineering (biomedical, electrical, mechanical), applied mathematics, and statistics. Please: try to avoid unnecessary jargon or excessive amounts of mathematics, and where it is necessary, define it and provide intuitive explanations/interpretations.
Oral presentations
The oral sessions of Cosyne are arranged in a single track, and thus most meeting attendees will be at your talk. As such, it is critically important that your talk be designed for a general audience and not for experts in your subfield.
Talk slots are 15 minutes (45 minutes for invited talks, 55 for keynote). This includes time for questions, so you should aim to finish in about 12 minutes (40 for invited talks, 50 for keynote). Due to tightness of the schedule, these times will be strictly enforced: Please rehearse your presentation so that the timing is predictable.
When viewed from the back of the room, your projected slides will subtend roughly five degrees of visual angle (the width of your hand at arm's length). Please lay out your slides so so that they are legible when viewed at that size.
Bring your laptop to the projectionist during the break before your talk session, to connect it and verify that settings are appropriate. If your laptop requires an adaptor to connect to a VGA cable, please remember to bring it. We will also provide an audio connection (mini-phone plug), a microphone, and a laser pointer.
Posters
Poster boards are 96" x 48" (width x height), but they have a metal frame so the usable area is 91" x 45" (231cm x 114cm). Each board will be labeled with the poster number, which you will find on the online program listing, and also in the program booklet that you will receive at the meeting. Thumbtacks and tape will be provided onsite.
At least one author is expected to present the poster during the scheduled session. Posters may be put up any time beteen 3pm and the start of the session (7:30 pm). The session runs officially until 11:30pm, but it is common for attendees to remain well after. Posers should be left on the boards, until the end of the lunch break on the following day.
The poster should be comfortable to read from a distance of five feet. Use large fonts (suggested minimum: 30point), and do not overload with text! Use your poster as a visual aid, much the way you would use slides. Top-to-bottom ordering of content (as opposed to standard left-to-right used in western text) is preferred, as it allows multiple people to view the content in parallel without colliding.
Most of your listeners will want to hear a fairly short description (less than 10 min), and it is strongly suggested that you practice this. You can always lengthen it if the audience asks for more detail. You may also want to bring single-page reproductions of your poster or reprints of related articles to hand out.
Spotlight presentations
In addition to presenting a poster, spotlight presenters will give a 4-minute oral summary of their work on the afternoon preceding their poster presentation. The time will be strictly enforced, and there will be no time for questions.
Please limit your presentation to to 1-3 slides, emphasizing only the main message of your poster. Do not to squeeze the full contents of your poster into these slides! Rehearse your presentation so that the timing is predictable.
Please bring your presentation on a USB stick, in PDF or PPT format, to the projectionist during the break before your spotlight session, to connect it and verify that settings are appropriate. If necessary, you may give the presentation from your laptop.
