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We are delighted that you agreed to visit FRIB/MSU and are very much looking forward to your seminar. The purpose of the Nuclear Science Seminar is to communicate cutting-edge research to a broad audience with interest and some background in nuclear science, and, in some cases limited background. The goal of our seminars is to bring people together to learn about what is happening in the wider world of nuclear science (very broadly defined). Seminars are meant to be informative, enjoyable, and appeal to experts and non-experts alike. Because we have a very broad audience, the Nuclear Science Seminar should be thought of as equivalent to a Colloquium in a Physics department.

The time limit is 50 minutes, including discussions. The seminar starts at 15:30 on the dot and the audience will start filtering out of the auditorium promptly at 16:30 sharp. A good length is 40-45 minutes with an additional 5-10 minutes at the end for questions and discussion. Any longer will test the patience of the audience. We budget 30 minutes immediately before the presentation start time to set up and test the technology as well as to mingle with the audience. Tech support will be in the room at this time.

Our audience for the seminar is composed of 60 to 120 people and is unusually diverse. It includes graduate students, postdocs, and faculty working both in theory and experiment in the subfields of nuclear structure & reactions, nuclear astrophysics, tests of fundamental symmetries, radiochemistry, and accelerator science & engineering. The building has well over 600 employees in every category type and the seminars are routinely made available virtually synchronously via the FRIB Users contact list, so you might not know who will show up! In addition, FRIB is physically located very near to the Departments of Physics & Astronomy and Chemistry and our colleagues routinely come visit for the seminar. Please direct your talk at the non-experts on the specific sub-field presented.

Although it is called a “seminar,” the presentation is more in the style of a Colloquium that should be accessible to a broad audience with an interest in nuclear science and that should aimed at a first-year graduate student, who has had a strong general modern physics course at the undergraduate level.

The audience doesn't just want to understand the science, they also want to understand why the science is interesting and exciting. The first 1/3 of the talk should provide substantial background and motivation.

Reviewing material that the audience “should already know” is vital because it makes the ideas fresh on their mind and better prepares them to anticipate and receive the information in the latter part of the talk. A common misconception is that the audience is knowledgeable of all research areas for which FRIB is well known for. Given the diversity of the laboratory, this is not the case. There is no danger at all to “carry coal to Newcastle.”

Less is often more. A talk from which the audience remembers one interesting piece of science has already accomplished a lot.

Pre-composed equations on slides are difficult to digest in real time. As a general rule, it takes as much time to fully communicate an equation to the majority of the audience as it would to deliberately write the equation on a blackboard.

We recommend, in particular, to avoid switching topics towards the end of the talk. There is no need to cover an area in a comprehensive way. The majority of the audience members will not be experts and they just want to learn something interesting. Ending the presentation a few minutes early, so that there is more time for questions, is perfectly fine and even might be more effective!