Dear members: I would like to invite everyone to the 2017 All-Hands Meeting on Wednesday January 25 at the MIT Endicott House in Dedham. Please use this gathering as an opportunity to meet and talk with your colleagues. Somewhere in the room there may well be a collaborator for your next big result. We’ll be using the same guidelines as last year for the talks: Each student or postdoc that is funded by the center is expected to give a 5 minute presentation. It is important that these brief talks be comprehensible to our broad audience and to potential funders, so we are asking presenters to craft their talks with care. We’re also asking all attendees to participate in scoring and providing helpful comments on each presentation. This can be useful guidance for more effective communication, an increasingly important career skill. “Research Communication Challenge” scoring will focus on three criteria: 1. Clarity of motivation & significance: Why are you doing the work? What do you hope to achieve? 2. Speaking style & delivery: Tell us an engaging story without too much jargon. Can we hear you? 3. Effectiveness of slides and graphics: Can we read and understand everything that you project? Does each slide support the message, or is there too much information competing with the narrative for us to process in such a short amount of time? *Highest scorers in each category will win certificates and $100 cash prizes. In addition, the highest scorer overall will receive $100.* Attached is the slide presentation template with guidelines; however, you may modify it or design slides more suitable for your particular talk. You may use as many slides as you think you need, but please follow the 5 minute time limit exactly. Presenters who exceed the 5 minute limit by more than 30 seconds will be penalized in the scoring. However, there may be some time for Q&A following each presentation. [image: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER] <https://goo.gl/forms/G2BWZrgrWrM3dhu22> *Deadline to register is Tuesday, January 17. * Finally, please send your presentations *by Sunday evening, January 22nd to Cathy (cmbourg(a)MIT.EDU &lt;cmbourg(a)MIT.EDU&gt;)* and we’ll upload them and organize them into the schedule. We’ll send links to each registered participant on Wednesday morning, Jan 25th, for you to access the presentation scoring and feedback site via a smartphone, tablet or laptop. Until then, Marc