CHEMISTRY G25.3010                                                                                                                        Fall, 2009

 

Second-Year SEMINAR

6:15 PM Thursdays

 

MAIN 1003

 

Nadrian C. Seeman

1066 Waverly; ned.seeman@nyu.edu; http://seemanlab4.chem.nyu.edu

 

RULES FOR PRESENTATIONS:

 

(1)          You should report on a series of research papers (1-3) addressing a single topic from the current literature.  You will have 30 minutes.  Plan your talk to take about 25 minutes, and expect 5 minutes of questions.  Practice your talk out loud several times before presenting it to the class.  There will be 2 speakers per evening, sometimes 3.  It is your job not merely to present material, but to make sure that the audience understands it.  Speak clearly, make sure that your voice can be heard over New York City background noise  Do not read large quantities (more than a sentence or so, except as numbered points) of printed text.

 

(2)          The topic should be part of chemistry and should have broad appeal. The work should be interesting and ground-breaking, either in techniques or in findings.  Work that presents progress without key and interesting conclusions should not be presented.  Neither I nor your classmates wish to be bored!  Assume none of us care about the field in which you do your research.  Papers must be approved by me 2 weeks before your presentation.  Email me if I am out of town. Send complete citations [including title and all authors], but do not send articles. I will forward the paper list to an appropriate faculty member, if the area is far beyond my expertise.

 

(3)          One of the things you should learn from this course is taste.  Try to choose papers from high-profile journals.  This is where the most exciting results are most likely to be published.  Examples are Nature and Specialized Nature Journals, Science, Cell, Molecular Cell, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. (USA), Phys. Rev. Lett., NanoLett.

 

(4)          This is a course in current literature.  Limit yourself to articles from the last 2 years.  A single earlier background article is OK, but there should be at least one recent research article.

 

(5)          An abstract with references should be distributed electronically to the entire department including faculty 1 week before your presentation.

 

(6)          You are responsible for preparing your own PowerPoint presentations.  If the article has color figures, show them in color. You are responsible for having your PowerPoint working by the beginning of class.  Don't expect me to solve problems involving PowerPoint or some other display system.

 

(7)          Make sure that your PowerPoint slides do not contain lines that are less than 5% the height of the page.  Enlarge tables from articles to conform to this standard, and do not type your own pages to put more than 20 lines/page.

 

(8)          There are no valid excuses for missing a presentation.  In case of an emergency, switch with another student.

 

(9)          You are expected to show up for all presentations, not just your own.

 

(10)       It is important to learn how to think quickly enough to ask good, incisive questions based on a talk, without necessarily having read the papers.  You should listen closely enough to ask questions after the presentation.  You are expected to ask questions!

 

 

Schedule

 

 

September 24

 

Jonathan Lai

Shahab Morezaei

October 15

 

Zhenzi Mi

Yufeng Wang

Xuecong Zou

October 22

 

Ying Chen

Chen Li

Eli Taicher

October 29

 

Brooke Bullock

Wenjing Gong

Fei Han

Han Yan

November 12

 

Nam Nguyen

Dong Niu

Xia Xiao

Zina Zhu

November 19

 

Yu Cao

Ming Chen

Jin Yang

Shufeng Ye

December 03

 

Uri Kotzer

Yawei Shi

Xiaojian Wang

Miao Ye