A journey through nerves, narratives, and the quiet power of being seen
The first time I stood beside a research poster, I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The data was mine, the visuals polished, the graphs checked and rechecked. But my hands were cold. My voice hesitated.
Not because I didn’t know the content—but because I wasn’t yet sure I belonged next to it.
It was a study on herbicide-induced root growth inhibition in Allium cepa. My first real research presentation. I had counted over 400 mitotic cells, evaluated toxicity responses, and written it all up with care.
But in that moment, it wasn’t the numbers I was thinking about.
It was this quiet, inner question: Will they listen to me?
Someone stopped. Read. Asked. Listened.
And by the end of that day, I stood a little taller.
🌿 Poster by Poster, I Grew
Each new poster taught me something different—not just about research, but about resilience.
When I presented a poster on how biotechnology and AI could reshape modern farming, I found myself speaking not just about tools, but about trust—about reimagining agriculture as something climate-resilient, tech-enabled, and deeply human.
When I shared my genomic comparison of Withania somnifera and Solanaceae species, I realized I was stepping into deeper waters. It was my first time presenting on computational biology, and it pushed me to explain alignment, divergence, and evolutionary patterns in ways that could make sense beyond a bioinformatics audience.
At a workshop on omics and drug design, I was met with questions that crossed boundaries—students, educators, and researchers all wanting to know: How does this connect to real-world food systems? To medicine? To policy?
And I had to learn how to bridge the abstract with the applied.
And then, of course, there was the first one that gave me my footing—the cytogenetic study on herbicide toxicity. When I presented that again at the D S Kothari Centre and won first place, it wasn’t just a prize.
It was a moment of becoming.
🧠Lessons That Don’t Fit Into Abstracts
What no one teaches you is that presenting science isn’t just about what you say—it’s how you show up.
It’s how you hold the space when someone challenges you.
It’s how you make your research feel relevant, even to someone outside your field.
It’s how you hold onto your voice—especially when you’re still learning to believe in it.
With every poster, I stood a little taller.
Not just in confidence, but in conviction.
In my ability to connect dots across systems.
To speak not from a script, but from a sense of purpose.
Each presentation became a page in a longer story.
And slowly, I stopped seeing these as separate studies. I began to see them as parts of a much larger question I was beginning to ask:
What does it mean to take science out of silos—and place it into conversations that matter?
🌍 More Than a Presentation
These posters weren’t just about data.
They were about learning to translate science into something alive.
They helped me understand how to speak across disciplines.
How to make my research not just accurate, but accessible.
How to begin seeing myself not only as a student, but as a scientific communicator and collaborator.
And most importantly, they helped me understand that the work I want to do—in climate adaptation, in environmental governance, in science-policy translation—starts in spaces like this.
In front of a poster. With a voice. And the willingness to use it.
✨ What Stayed With Me
Each time I stood beside my research, I stood beside a version of myself that had grown.
Quieter at first.
Then steadier.
Then certain.
And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this:
Presenting science isn’t about proving yourself. It’s about sharing something that matters to you—and watching it matter to someone else.
That’s the spark.
That’s the shift.
And I’ll carry that with me, poster by poster, into every room I step into next.
— Sneha 🌾