"Make an impact with your
abstract and poster
Piush Mandhane MD PhD FRCPC
Associate Professor
Divisional Director: Pediatric Respirology
University of Alberta
Designing your poster and abstract to
engage your audience
• The Abstract
– The gateway to your research
– Difference between scientific and lay abstract.
• The Poster
– Communicating your poster to a varied audience
– Considerations when creating your poster
– Interacting with visitors during the poster session.
Why do you want people to read your
abstract and visit your poster?
• Explaining your work helps you
– understand the work
– the strengths and the limitations
– develop ideas for future projects
• Meet people interested in the same work as you
– Collaborators (current and future)
– Future supervisor(s)
– Potential Mentors (this cannot be overstated)
– Funders/donors
What is the purpose of the abstract?
Meeting / Grant
Manuscript
Lay Audience
Scientific
Community
Common elements to most abstracts
• Context / Background
• Methods
– Done or proposed
• Conclusions
– Implications of the work
– Future directions
Some unique elements for
each type of abstract
Meeting /
Manuscript
Lay Audience Knowledge
Translation
Scientific
Results
Community
Grant
Importance
Unique features
Strengths
The scientific abstract
• The abstract most people are familiar with
– Defined structure
• Background, methods, results, conclusion
– Technical language for a general scientific
audience
– Some jargon acceptable
– Report the results
– Cautious in over-interpreting your findings
Scientific abstract components
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Title
Background
Methods
Results
Conclusion
figures
Genome-Wide Interaction Analysis of
Air Pollution Exposure and Childhood
Asthma with Functional Follow-up
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Rationale: The evidence supporting an association between traffic-related air pollution exposure and incident
childhood asthma is inconsistent and may depend on genetic factors.
Objectives: To identify gene–environment interaction effects on childhood asthma using genome-wide singlenucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data and air pollution exposure. Identified loci were further analyzed at epigenetic
and transcriptomic levels.
Methods: We used land use regression models to estimate individual air pollution exposure (represented by
outdoor NO2 levels) at the birth address and performed a genome-wide interaction study for doctors’ diagnoses of
asthma up to 8 years in three European birth cohorts (n = 1,534) with look-up for interaction in two separate
North American cohorts, CHS (Children’s Health Study) and CAPPS/SAGE (Canadian Asthma Primary Prevention
Study/Study of Asthma, Genetics and Environment) (n = 1,602 and 186 subjects, respectively). We assessed
expression quantitative trait locus effects in human lung specimens and blood, as well as associations among air
pollution exposure, methylation, and transcriptomic patterns.
Measurements and Main Results: In the European cohorts, 186 SNPs had an interaction P < 1 × 10−4 and a look-up
evaluation of these disclosed 8 SNPs in 4 loci, with an interaction P < 0.05 in the large CHS study, but not in
CAPPS/SAGE. Three SNPs within adenylate cyclase 2 (ADCY2) showed the same direction of the interaction effect
and were found to influence ADCY2 gene expression in peripheral blood (P = 4.50 × 10−4). One other SNP
with P < 0.05 for interaction in CHS, rs686237, strongly influenced UDP-Gal:betaGlcNAc β-1,4galactosyltransferase, polypeptide 5 (B4GALT5) expression in lung tissue (P = 1.18 × 10−17). Air pollution exposure
was associated with differential discs, large homolog 2 (DLG2) methylation and expression.
Conclusions: Our results indicated that gene–environment interactions are important for asthma development
and provided supportive evidence for interaction with air pollution for ADCY2, B4GALT5, and DLG2.
Don’t judge a book by it cover but
people will judge you by your title
• Most people often scan the abstract titles to
determine what posters they want to visit
• Make the title short, descriptive and interesting
– What is the main result of your work?
– What sets this work apart from the prior
work?
– Are the results controversial?
Okay – so the title caught their attention
Sell your work in 250 - 300 words
• The abstract should answer the following questions:
– Why is this important?
– What does this add?
– Do I need to explain methods?
– What did I find?
– What do I recommend?
• Figures (if allowed) are your friend
– A picture tells 1000 words.
– Grabs people’s attention
Background
• What is already known and not known ?
– A few sentences each describing a different aspect
of information.
Objective/Question/Hypothesis
• State the question (PICOT) or hypothesis
• Clearly state the research objective
Methods
• Describe important elements of the approach
– Study design
– Key variables
Results
• Brief description of
the study sample
• Include the most
important results that
answer the question
–logical order
• Consider tables or
graphs if allowed.
Andrew Murray
@docandrewmurray
Andrew Murray
@docandrewmurray
Andrew Murray
@docandrewmurray
Andrew Murray
@docandrewmurray
Conclusions
• What is the primary take home message?
– Additional important findings
– Provide an opinion on implications of findings.
Importance of the lay abstract
• Stakeholders and members of the public
without scientific training also serve on
scientific review groups and ethical review
boards
• Lay summaries are used for dissemination on
the web, in the press and in other public
venues.
• Publishers use lay abstracts from their ;
posting them on their websites
Hot Chilies Cool Down Gut
Inflammation in Mice
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The spicy compound in chilies kicks off a chemical cascade that reduces gut inflammation and immune activity in
mice.
The ingredient that makes hot chilies hot is called capsaicin—and it can set your mouth on fire. But the spicy
compound has a soothing effect too: in your gut, it kicks off a chemical cascade that might calm the immune
system and reduce inflammation.
Researchers studied that phenomenon in mice. Once inside the gut, the capsaicin molecules plugged into a
specific receptor, spurring the release of another compound, called anandamide. Anandamide happens to be an
endocannabinoid—similar to active ingredients in marijuana—which binds to cannabinoid receptors in the gut.
That last step in the cascade ramped up the production of cells that damp down inflammation in the mice—and
even cured them of a mouse model of diabetes type 1, an autoimmune disease.
If all this sounds a bit similar to the chemical messaging that happens in the brain… that's because it is. "The gut
has a very large nervous system. It's almost as large as the brain itself. Pramod Srivastava, an immunologist at
UConn Health and one of the study’s leaders.
"We don't quite fully understand what this huge amount of neurons are doing in the gut. We don't understand its
language, and the molecules and mediators. And I think with this work we can at least claim to have found a
couple of words in that language."
So to recap that chemical chain: chilies cause the production of endocannabinoids, which produce immune
suppressant cells, which soothe inflammation. So, what if you cut out the chili initiator, and just eat
cannabinoids—pot brownies, stuff like that?
"Obviously we are very interested in people who use edible cannabinoids. I'm extremely curious if people with
colitis or Crohn's disease, who are edible pot users, do they benefit from it? I have no idea. But it's something we
can now find out because sizable numbers of people are consuming those edibles.”
Scientific America May 2, 2017
Find your headline
• State the main impact of your work with a
simple phrase,
– What is your main take-home message?
• Summarize the most important and relevant
information.
– A brief synopsis at the beginning allows you to get
key points across, capture attention, and draw in
the audience.
Starting the lay abstract
• Not simply a recapitulation of your scientific abstract
with some technical words and jargon changed.
• Make reasonable assumptions about
– grade-level, vocabulary, prior experience, and interests of the
audience
• Less structured
– Prose or narrative structure is acceptable
• Keep the language straight-forward
– Assume an educated but not necessarily science reader
• Newspapers write at 8th grade
– Neither technical language nor jargon is appropriate
– Avoid acronyms unless well known
The lay audience abstract - content
• Provide the reader with context
– What is the problem
– How many people does the problem affect
• If a meeting / manuscript abstract
– Report the main result as simply as possible
• If a grant abstract
– Who could benefit from this work
• e.g. knowledge mobilization
– Address the stakeholders
• government, health, patients, healthcare providers
The lay audience abstract - language
• Practice a verbal explanation with someone
from your audience;
• Read your draft aloud and revise
• Check readability statistics and simplify as
needed
• Have both lay audience and peer scientists
read your summary
– Abstract should be accessible to the public while
remaining true to the science.
• Abstract
– http://breathe.ersjournals.com/content/10/3/265.full
– Journal of Cancer Education
• September 2014, Volume 29, Issue 3, pp 577–579
• Poster Presentations
– https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/presenta
tion-slides-13905480
– https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/effective
-communication-13950970