How to interact with invited seminar speakers?

[Tall Chai Latte]

I'm sure all of us have this experience: a guest speaker is invited to give a talk at weekly seminar of your department. The speaker was probably invited by your advisor, or perhaps his/her area of research is very close to your own. You are asked to have lunch with him/her by your advisor/grad program coordinator, along with a couple other students. Here you are, at the lunch, not having much to contribute to the conversation other than introducing yourself and what you do when asked, and simultaneously feeling a little bit awkward inside. The conversation just goes lively around you. 

 

This is exactly what is happening to me. I don't know what contributes to this, but I guess my personality has a big part in this -- I'm an introvert. I just don't have much to say to people I've never met before. But I fear I might be missing out on potential networking opportunities if I can't manage to contribute something in this kind of lunch meetings. 

 

My advisor invited a big person in the field to come give a talk this week, and naturally I am asked to accompany the speaker at lunch with a grad student friend of mine. The guest speaker had the exact same background as me and is currently doing what I do! Sounds like a great opportunity right? 

 

But how do I get out of my introverted self? Any advice/tips/suggestions? I have her CV in my hands, anything I can do to prepare?

[biotechie]

I have to go to these all the time in our department. You have their CV. That is really helpful! Go online to pubmed and look up their papers. Look over their abstracts to find out what they're up to for the past 5 or so years. Find the things that correlate to your research or that you just find interesting, and learn about them. Come up with questions about their research and questions based on their studies that they can answer to help you with your research questions. Maybe they do a protocol like Chromatin IP or RNA isolation that you are struggling with, so they might be able to help. Take notes during their lecture and take those questions into the lunch. These questions will probably actually open up more conversation, and you may be able to learn from this person in ways that will help your own project. 

I'm serious; this is how I learned of a decent antibody to a protein I am working on. I have data that I might not have gotten had I not asked this professor about a figure in one of their papers!

[rising_star]

I go to these all the time too. But, I'm not as introverted as you are so that's part of it. Usually, I ask them about what their current research is, where they think the field is going, etc. Or, and this probably happens more often, they ask me a bunch of questions about what I do, suggest people I should read and theories I should incorporate, and then just give some general grad school advice.

[zapster]

Try to ask open ended questions, where the speaker can provide her opinions (rather than fact-based questions), this usually provides far more opportunities to continue the discussion.

 

Sometimes asking for her opinion on your work (not specifically your research maybe but the broad line of research) rather than her work can make for interesting discussions - leading the speaker to ask you more about your work for example.

 

If she is on the review committee of some journal, ask questions about the focus of the journal, or what she looks for in up and coming research etc.

 

Getting into the right frame of mind just before the lunch / meeting is important - don't worry too much about "saying the right thing", that can quickly trigger strong inhibitory controls (of course don't hit the other extreme either!).

[ion_exchanger]

I'm an introvert as well, and I will most likely find myself in isimilar situations. The fact that you have her CV is a great start, and I agree with all the advice given before. Is the speaker part of any professional societies that seem interesting? You can ask them about that. My go to move is to read a paper and pick out techniques that we both do, but differently. Since you do the same things, it is a bit easier for you. For me, I express proteins in E.coli, so whenever I see someone who doesn't, just to get the conversation started I ask about their expression system and why they think it's better than any others. Another one of my recent favorite questions is where they see the field going in the next couple of years. People seem to like that.

[Tall Chai Latte]

Ion exchanger: it seems we might also do very similar things. I also express and purify proteins out of E. coli, and doing projects more along the lines of biochemistry and biophysics. I just picked up crystallography...

[ion_exchanger]

Tall Chai Latte seems like we do have similar backgrounds. I express and purify using E.coli, and my research is based on structural biology, x-ray crystallography. On my interviews I get and ask a lot of questions on different expression systems, yeast, s9, soluble vs. inclusion bodies, etc.

[fuzzylogician]

I'm an introvert too, but I still attend many events like you're describing. Although it's difficult, it's crucial to develop skills for dealing with these networking events (and that's what they are and what you should be using them for!). What works for me is to ask open-ended questions about the person and their work; people love to talk about themselves. Depending on our joint interests I might ask about the person's current projects or (if relevant) about where they went to school or where they live now. More often than not, they will also ask me about myself and my research and we might end up talking either about one of my projects or about a joint interest, for example a place we both lived in or a city we like to travel to. It's good to try and find easy things we can agree on and discuss, including benign topics like travel, weather, or food.

[Eigen]

I think it's something that the more you do, the easier it gets too.

 

Just like presentations- the first few I gave I was nervous, now they don't bother me much at all.

 

Meetings with invited speakers usually follow one of two formats for us- more formal & 1 on 1, or more informal and over a meal.

 

For the former, it's usually a chance for us to have half an hour or so to present our research and get comments on it, and get it out there. For longer spots, and especially with younger speakers, I usually take the time to ask about the job search, their path to where they are, etc.

 

For the latter, it's a lot more talk about the field in general, interesting things they've done, travel, etc. And a chance to hear fantastic stories about big name people in the field.

[aberrant]

Meetings with invited speakers usually follow one of two formats for us- more formal & 1 on 1, or more informal and over a meal.

 

For the former, it's usually a chance for us to have half an hour or so to present our research and get comments on it, and get it out there. For longer spots, and especially with younger speakers, I usually take the time to ask about the job search, their path to where they are, etc.

 

For the latter, it's a lot more talk about the field in general, interesting things they've done, travel, etc. And a chance to hear fantastic stories about big name people in the field.

 

That. 1 on 1 kinda meeting -- ask the speaker if he/she kind enough to comment on your work (especially if one is in the same field.) Have him/her to ask questions about your research or vice-versa. Lunch/dinner -- talk about science / things that they are interested in. Just keep it simply and network with the speaker. Sharing stories is always a great way to maintain the dynamic as a group, generally speaking.