Rin4’ is a competition in which UPF doctoral students give a four-minute oral presentation of their research to a general audience.

The initiative, which is similar to others in place at benchmark institutions such as the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), is also modelled after the popular TED Talks series. The aim is to promote doctoral students’ communication skills whilst at the same time bridging the gap between science and scientific knowledge and an interdisciplinary audience unfamiliar with the topic.

In short, the aim of the Rin4’ project is threefold:

• To encourage UPF doctoral students to include in their training the most effective skills and techniques for clearly conveying and disseminating knowledge.
• To raise awareness amongst tomorrow’s researchers of the importance of transferring scientific knowledge to a general audience, in keeping with the commitment of universities to public service.
• To narrow the gap between the science, knowledge, and research pursued at the university and the public at large.

The presentations are judged based on their academic significance, clarity of expression, and the speaker’s capacity and ability to convey his or her ideas and generally hold the audience’s attention. Participants may use supporting audiovisual material, although the presentation must be primarily oral.

UPF held the competition, a groundbreaking initiative in academia in Spain, for the first time in the 2014/2015 academic year. Since then, the university has launched various additional initiatives to help participants hone their oral presentation technique. A full list can be found in the ‘Get ready’ section.

The Rin4’ has four prize categories: first, second, third and a special prize awarded by the audience, consisting of 900, 600, 300 and 200 euros, respectively. The winner of the special prize is chosen by the audience in attendance at the final and may be one of the contestants awarded the first, second or third prize by the jury.

April 2018

Qualifying Round and Final: dates to be announced

Further information: https://www.upf.edu/web/rin4