Thesis Dissertation

Alas, you have finally made it. After months of literature reviews, failed experiments, late-night debugging sessions, and at least one existential crisis, you are standing at the finish line. This page will help you cross it with style.

Timing and Slide Count

The graduation committee has a tight schedule. Respecting your time slot is not just courteous — it is expected. Plan your talk around these targets:

• Thesis. The full session — presentation plus questions — lasts roughly 15 minutes. Aim to finish your talk in 10–12 minutes, leaving 3–5 minutes for the committee's questions.
• Short Thesis (tesina). Target a 7–8 minute presentation.

A reliable rule of thumb for slide count is one slide per minute, ±20%. A 10-minute talk therefore calls for roughly 8–12 slides (excluding the title and backup slides). If you find yourself with 20 slides for a 10-minute slot, you are not presenting — you are speed-reading.

Composure

It is completely normal to be nervous. Take a breath. Then consider this: if your thesis has been uploaded and formally approved, only an apocalyptic event can prevent you from graduating. The hard part — the actual work — is already done. The presentation is the celebration.

Speak clearly and at a measured pace. Nervousness tends to accelerate speech; consciously slow yourself down.

Finally, be proud. You did the research. You wrote the thesis. This is your moment to share it.

Telling Your Story

A graduation presentation is still a scientific presentation. It should be rigorous and technical — but it should also be a story. The committee has read dozens of theses; what makes yours memorable is not the number of equations on screen, but how clearly you communicate why your work matters.

When designing your slides, keep all the principles from the presentation guide firmly in mind: one idea per slide, visuals over walls of text, a clear narrative arc (motivation → gap → method → results), and a closing slide that people will actually want to look at during questions.

Backup Slides

After your closing slide, add some backup slides. These are not part of the main talk and will not be shown unless needed. They serve two purposes:

• Answering questions. When the committee asks about a specific experiment, a dataset detail, or an alternative baseline, you can flip to the relevant slide rather than trying to describe it verbally. This looks professional and well-prepared — because it is.
• Filling time. If you finish earlier than expected, a well-chosen backup slide can smoothly extend the talk without improvising.

Good candidates for backup slides include: extended ablation studies, additional qualitative results, implementation details that did not fit the main flow, and comparisons with baselines you could not cover in the allotted time. When in doubt, prepare more than you think you will need.

Rehearsal

We cannot stress this enough: practise out loud. Reading your slides in your head is not rehearsal. Speaking them in front of a patient friend is. They will catch unclear transitions and figures that need more explanation than you realise — precisely because they bring fresh eyes. By the time you walk into the graduation room, your friends and family should be thoroughly bored of hearing your talk. That is the target.

Finally, time every run-through. You will discover that the talk is either too short or too long — and almost never just right on the first attempt. Adjust accordingly.