6  Conferences

Conferences provide an opportunity to learn about new research, get feedback on your own research, practice presentation skills, take a short course, network, and more. Dr. Li is happy to discuss conferences relevant to your research and career goals in our meetings.

If we have discussed a conference and Dr. Li is funding your trip, please send Dr. Li a projected budget for the trip before purchasing plane tickets, registrations, or reserving hotels.

6.1 UCSC Travel Policies

Please review UCSC’s travel guide before you make purchases. The travel website sometimes is not up to date with the most recent policy changes, so it is also a good idea to look up in the emails for latest updates.

Some common pitfalls for conference travel: - Make sure you are within the lodging limit from UCSC. - Make sure the date of travel matches the conference dates (arriving no earlier than one day before the conference, and leaving no later than one day after the conference). If you would like to combine conference travel with personal trips (e.g., arriving a few days earlier or leaving a few days later), you will need to save records for a comparison ticket. - Similarly when traveling to and from a different location (e.g., flying from SFO to conference and returning to your home in a different city), comparison tickets are needed.

6.2 Some conferences and timeline to participate

Statistics

• ENAR, usually in March, with abstract submission deadline in October and student paper competition due in October.
• WNAR, usually in June, with abstract submission deadline in February and student paper competition due in April.
• ICSA Applied Statistics Symposium, usually in June, with abstract submission in April and student paper competitions from all ASA sections are due in April.
• Joint Statistical Meetings, usually in August, with abstract submission in February and student paper competitions from all ASA sections are due in November.
• International Conference on Health Policy Statistics, usually in January, with abstract submission in June.
• ISBA world meeting: every two years in July, with abstract submission in November and travel support in April (roughly).

Machine Learning for Health

• Machine Learning for Health Care
• CHIL

6.3 Giving research talks

Presenting on your research is a key component of the PhD life. You will experience presenting your research for classes, during advancement and defense, at conferences, competitions, and maybe when invited to give a seminar or job talk. It is one of the most important skills that has a lifelong benefit: whatever career path you follow after graduation, you will likely need to verbally explain to people what you have done, pitch ideas to your peers and supervisors, and answer questions to educate others or defend your opinions.

Presentations to different audiences and under different setups require different focuses, but some common strategies apply widely. To start, I highly recommend this set of tips on how to give a presentation from Trevor Campbell. It contains many useful suggestions on how to organize your research presentation.

One of the first and most common reminders I always have for mentees’ research presentation is thinking about your audience. It goes beyond understanding what their general background is. A good presenter should think really hard in the shoes of the audience: what would I want to know if I am the audience, and can I understand what is presented here? Which contents of the presentation would I skip and what would I focus on, if I’m learning it in the audience in real time? Thinking as if you are the audience usually can lead to important realizations on how to tell the story (yes, research presentation is telling a story!)

Another common challenge with newcomers to research presentation is how to handle questions. Of course, the types of questions you get during defense, job talk, and general conference talk, etc., can be widely different and can have different intentions. However, you can always prepare for questions you expect from the audience (going back to thinking in the shoes of the audience) and practice. There are also many resources online about how to effectively answer questions. For example, this guide went through typical types of questions you may get.

There are not many strict rules in answering questions, except for probably one that always applies: do not pretend you know the answer when you don’t. If you didn’t catch the question or didn’t understand it, you can simply ask for clarification or try to rephrase to confirm if your understanding is correct. If you understand the question and do not know the answer, just say you don’t know. It is ok you do not know everything. If you can, you may give some comments related to the question, explain why you can’t give an answer, or simply say you will read more and get to it later. But it is important to acknowledge that you understand what is being asked, and that you can’t give an answer right away. It is far more important to know you know you don’t know (yes, in almost all types of research presentations mentioned above, even in exam settings). On the other hand, when you don’t know you don’t know, or when you try to make up something, or when you try to tweak the question into something else, that can be a problem for your audience.