1: Please describe yourself using 3 adjectives.

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Nicholas:

 Bookworm, fun and proactive.

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Esther:

Passionate, committed, optimistic.

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Ing Zheng:

Quiet, persistent, optimistic person.

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2: What is the secret of your success?

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Esther:

My Dean, Prof Allan and supervisor, Dr Abhishek played a major role in this and I really want to thank them personally because they are the ones who introduced clinical audits to me. People seldom understand the importance of it, which is to improve the quality of treatment for our patient hence this triggered me to choose this topic. I wanted to share about clinical audits with other people from different countries. One very important phrase from my supervisor was 'no one knows better about this research except yourself' and that gave me a confidence boost. Therefore, just believe in yourself and do your best.

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Ing Zheng:

I practised a lot before this APDSA presentation. I even practised in front of my friends and asked for their feedback. For example, how they thought about my presentation and from there I try to improve myself. I also practised on the flow of the presentation and time management as it was limited. I would present it in a simpler way like explaining a story to catch the audience's attention. You can present anything but if you can’t really catch the audience’s attention, no one will listen to your presentation. One tip is to highlight key findings in your presentation.

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 Nicholas:  

My secret to success is mainly from my mentors, lecturers and team members. My lecturers gave us a lot of guidance. Dr. Prashanti trained us every evening after class and during lunch break. My team mates, Jane and Bok, had listened to my presentation every day and gave a lot of inputs. Present the presentation in a way that a 10 years old can understand. Don’t have to complicate things as long as the judges can understand. Also, present it in a way that is out of the box, like adding audio or video to make it interesting.

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3: Please tell us how did you prepare for the competition, and what happened on the day itself?

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Ing Zheng:

I was really nervous that day as I was the last few candidates to present. All my friends had already presented, went out for lunch and were visiting the exhibition. So I was sitting in the hall and I was high on adrenaline all day. Since there were a few candidates left, I just decided to give my best. Frankly speaking, it was a surprise to me that I have won.

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Esther:

This was my very first poster presentation competition. Let me start off with how I prepared prior to it, I was encouraged to join this competition by my supervisor. To be honest, I was very excited because I really wanted to give my best shot and made sure that my poster was well prepared such as the graphics and layout. Besides I am grateful to have my supervisor as he identified my weakness and gave unsolicited suggestions during the practice sessions. On the day itself, it went smoothly. One thing that surprised me was the use of electronics in displaying the posters in which we can expand and minimize the size of fonts and to the area we wish to focus on more. The most important part of the poster presentation was the Q&A session. That session gave us a lot of opportunities to elaborate further and to answer the judges’ queries. 

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Nicholas:

Before the presentation, I was quite nervous because you would see 20-25 participants and these were among the best candidates from different countries to participate. In the morning, I went through a lot of journals and kept rehearsing my lines. While presenting, it was quite nervous as everyone is looking at you and I can only look straight to present.

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4: Any advice for future participants?

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 Nicholas:  

Our Malaysian co-curriculum is quite well equipped and it allows us to make good research and presentation. The main thing is to read through a lot of journals and get your facts right, do get a lot of citations as well. Practise more and think out of the box when presenting.  

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Esther:

I think that you will need to prepare well, do your best and most importantly be confident during the presentation. Practice will help boost your confidence and once you have practised more you will get used with the flow and not be afraid when presenting in front of people.

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 Ing Zheng:

Basically practise a lot to get confidence. During university, you will have some presentation activities to do hence do get the opportunity to present and train your presentation skills. Another thing, if you have the chance, is to observe any research competition. Watch how they present and see what kind of questions the judges would ask. Basically you’ll get a bit of experience from there, and you could even start this in Year 3 or Year 4. The most important thing is that you will need to know what kind of research you're doing. Read a lot of journals, especially the discussion part of the research. You have to know it very well and this will help you to do great in the Q&A session. This session is very important. If everyone’s presentation skills are almost the same, the Q&A session will help differentiate the well deserved ones.

 

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As the saying goes, practice makes perfect.

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Thank you so much Dr. Kan, Dr. Nicholas and Esther for the great sharing session. It was very informative and truly inspiring. We hope this would encourage more students from our country to participate and get out from their comfort zones!  

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