"I had never done anything like this before" and PubhD Coimbra "was completely innovative for me"

Why did you decide to participate in PubhD Coimbra?

Basically, I had heard about PubhD from colleagues, and I thought it was an interesting activity, and it's always a challenge to communicate to an audience that you don't know what audience is going to be, so you have to be open to all kinds of questions. And that's very challenging because you don't know what kind of questions you're going to get. You're so focused on the scientific part, but if you open up to a wider range of the population, you'll get a completely different perspective.

How was your experience in this edition of PubhD Coimbra?

For me the biggest challenge was coordinating the microphone with the board, because I had never done anything like that and that was completely innovative for me, to be able to go outside the box of the elements we are used to using. Usually we have a presentation, with prepared slides. Maybe we even prepare each slide with more care, here it is very much about using our own improvisation and trying to be as captivating as possible for an audience and not be as formal as we would be in a congress, for example.

Would you advise other colleagues to participate?

Of course I would advise them to come to PubhD, not least because it is something that helps to strengthen the communication tools that we all need to have nowadays. When doing science we also need to know how to communicate it, and this is an interesting tool to explore.