{"id":671,"date":"2014-03-26T03:05:23","date_gmt":"2014-03-26T03:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/?p=671"},"modified":"2014-03-26T03:29:54","modified_gmt":"2014-03-26T03:29:54","slug":"delta-of-wow-how-to-craft-a-scientific-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/2014\/03\/delta-of-wow-how-to-craft-a-scientific-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Delta of Wow!: How to Craft a Scientific Proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently met with <a href=\"http:\/\/cem.sbi.org\/web\/people-toner.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Dr. Mehmet Toner <\/a>to discuss my PhD project and he gave me great advice on developing a proposal for my oral qualifying exam (or, more broadly, for any scientific presentation).<\/p>\n<p>There are two key elements one must nail at the beginning before the committee lets you go on explaining your proposed aims and experimental methods: 1) <em>What Is<\/em> and 2) <em>What Is Possible<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>What Is<\/em>\u201d breaks down into two components:<\/p>\n<p>1)\u00a0\u00a0 <b>Significance<\/b> represents the <em>emotional<\/em> appeal of your project. This is where you tell stories about the pain point you are addressing, how many people suffer from the disease you\u2019re tackling, the cost of the problem, its global reach, etc. You must convince your committee that your problem is important. The time and place for pulling heartstrings in a scientific presentation is here.<\/p>\n<p>2)\u00a0\u00a0 <b>Background<\/b> is the <em>analytical<\/em> portion of your story. It\u2019s where you talk about the state of art, the existing literature, and what is currently known. This is where you show your committee that you\u2019ve done your homework on what exists and carved out a niche for yourself in a landscape of opportunities.<\/p>\n<p>The delta between the picture you paint of \u201c<em>What Is<\/em>\u201d and the picture you\u2019ll paint in the rest of your presentation of \u201c<em>What Is Possible<\/em>\u201d represents your <i>Wow! <\/i>Factor. Maximize the Wow.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-674\" alt=\"DeltaOfWow_Diagram\" src=\"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DeltaOfWow_Diagram.png\" width=\"792\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DeltaOfWow_Diagram.png 792w, https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DeltaOfWow_Diagram-300x113.png 300w, https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/DeltaOfWow_Diagram-640x242.png 640w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 792px) 100vw, 792px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Dr. Toner left me with some final wise words:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAll PhD projects are like Swiss cheese. They are full of holes. What we [your qualifying exam committee] care about is that you can plug the holes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Diagram created by me based on a sketch that Mehmet Toner drew during our meeting. Brain icon adapted from <a href=\"http:\/\/iconsforlife.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">iconsforlife.com<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently met with Dr. Mehmet Toner to discuss my PhD project and he gave me great advice on developing a proposal for my oral qualifying exam (or, more broadly, for any scientific presentation). There are two key elements one must nail at the beginning before the committee lets you go on explaining your proposed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-phd-life"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linacolucci.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}