My original defense materials were"arranged in the order I did the work": motivation first, then methods, then data, and finally the conclusion. My advisor flipped through two pages and said,"Reviewers don't have the patience to walk through it with you from the beginning."
Later, I changed to organizing it in the order reviewers see it. The entire package was produced with MuchSci's office assistant agent.
Here is the reviewers' order
- Explain what I did in one page. Right after the cover, give the conclusion page: a one-sentence conclusion, three supporting points, and one key number.
- Look at the data first, then the methods. So the data table goes before the methods.
- Follow-up questions all land on details. So the appendix must include raw data, parameter tables, and specification documents.
- Citations and ethics statements come last.
I arranged the material package according to these four steps, and reviewers can go through the whole thing in under twenty minutes.
The six items in the material package
- PPTX: no more than fifteen pages, one judgment per page.
- Word body summary: two pages, a title sentence + three supporting points + one table.
- Excel data table: the raw values behind the charts, including a source column.
- Appendix PDF/Word: parameter tables, instrument specifications, and references to procedures.
- Talking points: one opening sentence, the page number corresponding to each conclusion, and five questions you might be asked.
- Submission checklist: what to submit, where to submit it, and when to submit it.
For all six items, I handed the office assistant agent a one-sentence request; it produced editable finished files, and I then revised them according to the school template. The official description of it is"describe your needs in one sentence and get editable PPT, Word, Excel finished files"; the output is editable finished files, with multi-format output support and previewable, further editable results—this is crucial for defense materials, because every file you hand over must be editable.
How I phrased that sentence
"For the defense committee, a ten-minute talk; what counts as done: being able to answer how the conclusion was reached."With all three elements written fully, what the office assistant agent delivers is"ready to submit", not just"ready to look at".
Three things I must review myself in the material package
- Every number in the data table: verify it against the original file.
- Every claim on the conclusion page: it must be supported by a corresponding page.
- Formatting: manually adjust the cover, page numbers, and reference format according to the school template.
Three features that support the entire material package
- Data and chart source files are pulled from MuchSci's personal knowledge base; if you organize them regularly, you won't have to search your whole hard drive before the defense.
- For references cited in the appendix, use MuchSci's paper search assistant to verify DOI and volume, issue, and page numbers, fixing the format one place at a time.
- Figures are produced with MuchSci's scientific plotting tool (after the first draft, adjust font sizes and numbering for the defense version).
A whole material package can be laid out in one evening. MuchSci's office assistant agent handles finished files, MuchSci's personal knowledge base handles source materials, MuchSci's paper search assistant handles citations, MuchSci's scientific plotting handles figures.
What I later realized about defense materials is that the test is not how complete they are, but whether the order is right. This is also where a graduate AI assistant can help: it produces finished files according to my requirements, while I set the order from the reviewers' perspective.