The key to giving good presentations? "Know your audience and know your objective." - TSR&TP Director John Knezovich

TSR&TP Director John Knezovich kicked off the 21st Annual Research Symposium at the Mission Inn in Riverside with a course on presentation skills. The half hour course provided tips on presenting to non-peer groups, common pitfalls, and approaches for maximizing effectiveness. "Often people give very good technical talks, but they're not memorable, they have too many graphics, or they are overwhelming because the presenter tried to cram too much in," said Knezovich. "You want people to remember 1 or 2 important things from your talk. The key to giving a good presentation is to know your audience and know your objective."

Many of the students at the symposium attended the short course and said they found it to be very useful. The powerpoint slides are available for download.

More than 140 people attended the symposium, including UC faculty and graduate students from all 10 campuses, representatives from federal and state government, private industry, and public interest groups. Friday evening's agenda included an informal poster session and a banquet dinner followed by Toxics Jeopardy and the keynote by John Warner on green chemistry.

Friday evening's session in the Music Room at the Mission Inn in Riverside, CA featured posters on all the research TSR&TP has supported over the past year.

Saturday's session began with presentations by last year's symposium best poster winners, Kou-San Ju of UC Davis, Cynthia Kern of UC Santa Cruz, and Rachel Washburn of UC San Francisco. Following the formal poster sessions, Molly Church formerly from UC Santa Cruz presented her research on lead in condors, Jay Gan of UC Riverside talked about pyrethroid contamination in urban streams, and David Sedlak discussed the impact of pharmaceuticals and other toxics down the drain.

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