To start her UC Davis Grad Slam presentation, fourth-year Ph.D. student Julia Mouat asked audience members to think about their grandparents. 

“What do you know about them? Their lives before you were born?” Mouat asked. 

Then, using only one slide and talking for less than three-minutes, Mouat explained to a lay audience in an understandable and engaging way her complex research in epigenetics, which is the study of how one’s behaviors and environment can cause changes that affect the way genes work. In her presentation “Grandmas, Ghosts, and Genes,” Mouat shared how her research in the Integrative Genetics and Genomics Graduate Group has shown that the lifestyle choices and environmental exposures of a grandparent can impact the health of their grandchild. Specifically, Mouat is looking at how grandmaternal cigarette smoking may increase risk for autism spectrum disorder in a grandchild. 

“Researchers have shown that the lives of our grandparents can impact our health today,” she said.

For her efforts, Mouat won first place at the UC Davis Grad Slam Semi-Final round on Wednesday, April 6, 2023. She will represent UC Davis at the UC Grad Slam competition happening on May 5. 

 

Caring about science communications

Mouat decided to enter the 2023 Grad Slam competition for a chance to “go back to her public speaking roots.” She was a public speaking coach during her undergraduate years at the University of Pittsburgh. 

“When I came to grad school, I was always looking for opportunities to do science communications because I think that is something that is really important and that I care about,” she said. 

While Mouat was well-versed in public speaking, she said it was more difficult than expected to boil down four years of research into a three-minute presentation. Determining the most salient and interesting parts of her research took a long time.

“I tried to really think through what got me excited about my research when I first started doing it and first joined the lab,’” said Mouat who is part of the LaSalle Lab. “And then use that to try and understand what other people might find engaging about it.”

Mouat said it was purposeful to leverage people’s memories of their grandparents to draw in the audience and make the topic of her research approachable. She also has always had a fondness for using the term “ghosts,” a common phrase used in genetic research to describe genetic abnormalities that are passed from generation to generation. Next thing Mouat knew, she said had a catchy, alliterative title for her speech that would capture people’s attention. 

“My thought was to come up with something that people would read and think, ‘I don’t know how those things go together,’” she said. “I started with the ‘ghost’ thing because the whole ‘ghosts in our genes’ phrase is something I read and I’ve always loved that phrasing. Then I thought, okay, I’ve got two Gs with ghosts and genes. Then I realized I was talking about grandmas. So I added that in and it all flowed perfectly.”

Prepping for and participating in Grad Slam

To prepare for the UC Davis competition, Mouat said she watched videos of past Grad Slam participants and received one-on-one coaching offered by Graduate Pathways Institute—the professional development division of Graduate Studies. Her partner and fellow UC Davis graduate student, Morgan Domanico, also provided helpful feedback along the way. 

Mouat said she has thoroughly enjoyed the whole UC Grad Slam experience. She appreciated all the support she received from lab mates who attended in person, and her family and friends–including her undergraduate public speaking teacher–who attended via LiveStream. She also enjoyed getting to know the other UC Davis Grad Slam competitors and appreciated how extroverted everyone was because Mouat says she’s not a particularly extroverted person by nature.

“I thought everyone was incredibly kind and I felt like everyone there just wanted to do their best, for themselves, and not to beat someone else. I was also impressed with everyone’s talks. In fact, afterwards my parents said, ‘We were really surprised you won because everyone else was so good!’” Mouat said with a laugh.

Judges from the Campus Community and Beyond

In its ninth year, the UC Davis Grad Slam competition continues to shine a light on the groundbreaking research and scholarship our graduate community produces. But the event wouldn’t be possible without the dedicated people and organizations who support it. 

Each year, UC Davis Graduate Studies invites judges from the alumni, UC Davis and local community to evaluate the students’ presentations. The judges for this year’s Semi-Final round were:

• Lora Painter, Anchor/Reporter, ABC 10 Sacramento
• Stacey Muse, Director of Engagement, UC Davis Public Scholarship and Engagement
• Rinki Sethi ’04, VP & CISO, Bill.com
• Beth Tweedy, STEM Librarian for Life Sciences in the Researcher Services Department at UC Davis Library
• Jeffery Gibeling, Interim Vice Chancellor for Research at UC Davis