CLI 8402 Scientific Writing and Communications
'Students are expected to enter the course with general knowledge of ongoing research in their thesis research area, as well as an idea of what their individual research project will be. The overarching objective of this course is to equip students with the skills to present their research to a varying degree of detail in oral, poster and written formats. Central to the course is the expectation that students will become immersed in the research literature relevant to their project. Through a series of modules, students will practice synthesizing a body of literature, extracting the key components, and using them to build strong rationales for aims. Incorporated into this learning experience will be instruction on and practice in scientific writing, and journal club and research presentations. Students will practice developing hypotheses and clinical research plans for a clinical protocol. Finally, students will learn how to write basic components for a grant proposal such as a Specific Aims page, develop a solid Experimental Approach, and describe the Significance to frame their research proposal.
The format and sequence of lessons for the course are designed to guide students through the process of framing a scientific main objective with testable specific aims, strong rationales, question-driven experiments, and interpretation of results. Classes will be both didactic and interactive, and students will learn from each other, from thoughtful/methodical study of literature, and from the iterative practice of presenting, writing and peer review.