The Summer Science Seminar Series is designed to capitalize on the breadth and strength of the summer research efforts in SMAC. This weekly series of short talks will bring together the faculty and students participating in summer research, allowing us to learn more about what others are doing and to develop our skills in communicating our work to a broad audience.

The first few talks will be given by faculty. This is so that students can get into their work before needing to develop a presentation and so that students can see some examples of short, focused talks presented to a diverse audience. Faculty talks will also frequently help set the stage for the later student talks. Students will receive feedback on their talks from faculty and students. The goal will be to develop into better presenters of science.

The atmosphere of the talks will be a mix of formal and informal. There are a large number of students participating and time constraints demand that we hold rather true to time limits. Talks will be announced/introduced as in professional meetings, and discussion periods are expected to be rigorous (and hence useful to the speaker). Afterwards, there will be opportunity most weeks to socialize at a dinner provided by the faculty.  A good mix of quality science and friendship, in other words. We expect that the seminar will help in fostering other more purely social gatherings as well.