Workshop on scientific writing skills for graduate students

by Posted on

This workshop was conducted by instructors from Wellcome Trust- DBT India Alliance and included discussions on research ethics, manuscript and grant writing, and how to present one’s science.

Initially, the workshop was meant to be a one-day event catering to 60-80 participants. However, we received an overwhelming response to the call for registrations. Thus, there were two iterations of this workshop, one on August 26, 2019 and the other on August 28, 2019, for more than 185 participants.

We received participation from institutions such as University of Hyderabad, Osmania University, CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, National Institute of Animal Biotechnology, IIT Hyderabad and CSIR- Indian Institute of Chemical Technology. Interestingly, this was one of the first instances in recent history where M.Sc students, Ph.D students and post-doctoral fellows belonging to different institutions in Hyderabad converged in one place to learn the art of scientific writing.  Though it was designed on the lines of a refresher course, we hope that this workshop shall set the tone for extensive training courses in communication.

Here are some glimpses of the workshop.

Madhavan Chalat initiates an important discussion on ethics in research. Plagiarism, borrowing ideas and language, citations, authorship- all issues cropped up
As the participants sifted through multiple case studies, they were asked to decide which situations could be categorized as plagiarism and the reasons behind doing so. This led to an extensive discussion of situations they may encounter in their respective research careers.
“Do you like writing manuscripts?” The eerie silence which followed substantiates Katerina Klemer’s observations. Madhankumar Anandhakrishnan conveys the art of the writing a manuscript.
The participants engage in a writing exercise during the session ‘Writing a manuscript’.
With what can be described as a very courageous (and laudable) move, Madhankumar Anandhakrishnan presented an abstract that he wrote years ago in graduate school. He urged the students to dissect and point out the flaws in the structure of that abstract.
“What’s worse than giving a presentation? Giving a presentation on presentation skills.” Sarah Iqbal leads the post-lunch session on presentation skills- both through posters and powerpoint.