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This post was contributed by Brittany L. Uhlorn, a PhD Candidate at the University of Arizona.

Perhaps you’re about to present your first scientific poster, but unsure how best to prepare. Maybe you’re a presentation veteran, but have difficulty answering questions. Or perhaps you’re simply attending, but uncertain how to capitalize on your experience. No matter the reason for attending, your preparation and day-of game plan will ensure you have the most beneficial scientific conference experience possible.

When I started writing for the Addgene blog, I was focused on writing about new scientific techniques and cool plasmids. Creating graphics were usually the last thing I thought about when writing posts. Since then I’ve realized my figures are just as important, if not more important, than my writing. Initially I didn’t have access to professional-grade design software, like Adobe Illustrator, and I didn’t want to pay for these programs either. But with a little Googling and some trial and error, I found some free design software that let me create graphics that better communicated the science in my blog posts. This post highlights several of these free tools which will hopefully also help you communicate your science, whether it’s in presentations, manuscripts, or social media.

I recently received the following email from a friend: “I'm in the process of onboarding a new employee who's coming directly from grad school. The transition has been a bit rough for her (3 weeks in and there's a big office vs. lab culture shock). I'm looking to see if there are any resources that can help with the transition.”

Before I started writing for the Addgene blog, sharing Chemistry Cat memes was how I used social media as a scientist. I mean, I had a LinkedIn page and a Twitter handle, but I wasn’t using them to my professional advantage. It wasn’t until I wrote a blog post about a research paper that explored how scientists connect on Twitter that I realized 1) a lot of scientists are using social media professionally, and 2) I needed to start using Twitter.

This post was contributed by Laura Desrochers, a postdoctoral scientist at AstraZeneca.

Why I chose an industry postdoc

I’m currently doing an industry postdoc in neuroscience at AstraZeneca’s Waltham site after doing a brief academic postdoc. Why did I switch? Well, my long-term goal was to enter industry since I was drawn to the idea of working as a team to develop therapies that could directly impact patients. And, to be honest, I’ve never enjoyed grant-writing. The more I talked to people with industry experience, the more I heard that getting into industry early would only help.