Congratulations for Yiming HUANG (黄一鸣), a third-year PhD candidate, who recently won the Talks Prize 1 at the 73rd Irish Universities Chemistry Research Colloquium!
There were 72 second year PhD students who gave poster presentations and 40 third year PhD students who gave talks…
It was my first time speaking at an open conference. Therefore I felt very lucky and honoured to be the only Chinese person to win the prize.
All of the PhD candidates in attendance were excellent in their research and most were from local universities in Ireland. Queen’s University Belfast was the only participating university from the UK, according to Yiming.
I’m with Prof. Steven E.J. Bell’s group, based in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. The primary area of study for our group is the development of novel nanomaterials for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). My talk at the conference focused on controlling nanoparticle aggregates for stable SERS, which is the project I worked on the entire previous year.
Winning tips
I believe the award could not have been given to me without the following factors. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Bell, for his excellent guidance in the content of my presentation during the preparation stage. He pointed out that rather than a bunch of data, people prefer to hear a complete story, which was really inspired me. Secondly, to keep the audience interested and prevent them from becoming tired of listening, I used some videos, cartoons and real-life photos to better illustrate my stuff. For example, I made a comparison between my polymer network with nanoparticle aggregates and noodles network with meatballs. In addition, I paid attention to the pace of my presentation and established eye contact with the audience rather than just talking to myself, which enabled the audience to follow my thoughts.
We hope that these tips will be of help to the new comers and also send our best wishes to Yiming for a great success in her PhD research and future career.
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