“In the end, public speaking is a performance”

In 2023, EPFL PhD student Maria Marcinek attended the Swiss finals of My Thesis 180, a competition where PhD students must explain their thesis in precisely 3 minutes to a jury and a general audience. She recalls, “I was impressed by all of these students speaking publicly, being able to deliver a speech that is convincing and that holds the public’s attention, but also by their ability to condense complex ideas or research projects into in easy terms and in such a short amount of time.”

The following year, Marcinek challenged herself and entered the EPFL competition. She won, presenting her work on bacteria that could improve nutrient delivery to plants for agriculture. “To be quite honest, public speaking scares me! It is not my strength, but it was also a perfect challenge. I wanted to develop these kinds of skills, which are useful not only in science but more generally in life as well.”

In signing up for the EPFL competition, she was able to take part in a series of lessons provided by EPFL’s science outreach department, where a former professional newscaster turned TV, media and presentation trainer teaches contestants how to speak, and importantly, how to organize ideas for public speaking.

“I realized how much effort goes into public speaking because, in the end, it's a performance,” explains Marcinek. “It’s not about spontaneously presenting your ideas for three minutes, you need to stick to the time, get all pieces together, delivered with the right intonation, and all of these pieces must come together for the performance to be good. It’s a huge effort.”

The EPFL PhD student originally comes from Poland, where she grew up loving chemistry and the natural sciences in general. “I come from a family of scientists, my dad is a physicist but ended up in the chemistry department. My sister is a chemist. My mom is an environmental engineer. But they in no way pushed me towards the sciences. Chemistry was just my favourite subject in high school,” she recalls. “Early on in my studies, I realized that all of these topics are connected, and started to develop interests in interdisciplinary reseach.”

After receiving her engineering degree in chemistry in Poland, she moved to the Netherlands for a master’s degree where she would study nanotechnology and later polymer brushes, the latter being long chains of polymers tethered to a surface. As part of her master’s, she did a nine-month internship at EPFL with her current supervisor Harm-Anton Klok, world expert in polymer brushes, leading her to land a PhD position in his lab in 2019.

“The original idea was to attach nanoparticles to bacteria for drug delivery in medicine, but we realized we could try adapt the approach for delivery of agrochemicals for agriculture,” Marcinek explains. “It’s still an open question whether or not it will work, but the interdisciplinary approach is really stimulating and has potential applications that benefit the world. The fundamental idea came from an application, a goal to decrease hunger or reduce pollution, and this really motivates me.”

Marcinek, who is multi-talented with interests in cycling, water sports, artistic hobbies like drawing and playing the piano – and now a newfound talent in communications – is still figuring out her next step for after her thesis, acquiring new skills and challenging herself. “It’s my character to have multiple interests and I am driven by curiosity,” says Marcinek. “Right now I am focusing on finishing my PhD. But there are many prospects in industry, in academica, or perhaps even science communication.”