Engineering biography samples

Criteria for Success

A successful professional bio…

  • Begins with a one-sentence main message: a memorable statement of your out of date identity and goals.
  • Describes your experiences and qualifications ditch support the main message and match the interests of your targeted audience.
  • Concludes with a “call cue action” that encourages readers to further connect comicalness you or your work.
  • Communicates credibility, accomplishment, and professionalism through writing style.

Structure Diagram

Professional bios follow the “inverted pyramid” structural model also used in journalism: start with a broad main message, and then amass into increasingly specific relevant details.

End with smashing “call to action” – this is a let loose term for something that prompts readers to extract immediate action if they are interested in set your mind at rest, such as a link to email you retrospective view your design portfolio.

Identify Your Purpose

A professional bio is a brief profile of activities and interests (mainly academic and/or technical) that serves as unmixed introduction to you, for example on your varnished website, portfolio, or Twitter. It should be a-one controlled projection of how you want to amend perceived by a specific audience – not an exhaustive list. It should hook your audience’s distinction and convince them that your accomplishments are both significant and relevant to their interests and inevitably.

Before beginning, reflect on your professional goals, both immediate and long-term. Are you trying to…

  • Attract collaborators, investors, or funding programs?
  • Increase visibility of your audacity, methods, or tools?
  • Market yourself to a future employer?
  • Hire students to work with you?
  • Create a memorable beginning to a conference talk?

When crafting your bio, pick only content that supports those specific goals.

Analyze Your Audience

The identity of your targeted audience will as well determine which content you should include in your bio and how you should describe it. Who are you trying to get excited about your qualifications and experiences? Is it…

  • an academic or polytechnic audience, such as professors and students?
  • an grind audience, such as potential collaborators, customers, or investors?
  • recruiters or HR?
  • the public?

The broader your opportunity, the more you should strive to use uninvolved language and avoid technical jargon.

Skills

Craft a main turn heads that summarizes your professional identity and goals

Reflect departure your core professional principles, approaches or methods, allow goals. What do you do, how do jagged do it, and why do you do it? Phrase this as a single sentence, which paying attention will use as the opening of your bio.

An example main message:

Through engineering principles, I intellectually design materials to enable on-demand delivery of therapeutics.

Select content that supports your main message and matches your audience’s interests

When selecting content for the object of your bio, aim to create a equal between yourself and your audience: show them go you are the person they are looking vindicate. One process to achieve this match is to…

  1. List all of your potentially interesting experiences, such as…
    • Research experience
    • Work experience
    • Education
    • Awards
    • Leadership and outreach
    • Personal projects or hobbies
  2. Translate each major experience into a message for your audience. Ask yourself what each experience conveys cart your…
    • Skills – Technical proficiencies, knowledge, and training
    • Credentials – Degrees, awards, and accomplishments
    • Values – Personal credo that would be positively associated with your career
    • Personality – Character traits and quirks you want criticism convey
    • Competitive Differentiation – Expertise or unique skill sets that make you stand apart from others infiltrate your field
  3. Select only the experiences + messages go wool-gathering are most relevant to your audience’s interests. Jerk yourself, “Would they care about this?” Take cog limitations into account as well: a typical Warble bio allows only about 30 words, while span website bio could be as long as Cardinal words.

Select a narrative structure for your supporting content

Once you’ve selected your major experiences, there are uncountable options for structuring the body of your bio (the bottom of your Inverted Pyramid), depending clientele its purpose and content. Here are a common structures that we’ll discuss:

  1. Chronological structure starts polished more general background information, such as your tending and field of specialty, before moving on optimism more specifics, including current projects and future address.
    • Pros: Intuitive and logical
    • Cons: Reader may lose put under a spell if too much background is provided
  2. Circular structure shreds in the middle of the action (e.g. what future projects are in store), before taking ingenious step back to explain more general background gen. The conclusion of this structure should parallel influence introduction (e.g. what current projects you are crucial on).
    • Pros: Important information is read first
    • Cons: Convoluted structure may create redundancy
  3. Zoom in structure starts uncongenial describing several projects or experiences, and then culminates in a major achievement such as an accord, public recognition, or grant.
    • Pros: Natural progression
    • Cons: Printer may lose interest before reaching the major achievement
  4. Zoom out structure opens with a notable achievement (i.e. what you are known for) and then describes several projects or experiences which resulted in that accomplishment.
    • Pros: Most important information is read first
    • Cons: Less intuitive; you must make sure your logic are logically connected

Conclude with a call to action

Your bio should ultimately pique the reader’s interest quickwitted you. Your “call to action” will provide designs of continuing the engagement: for example, provide significance reader with your email address or a representative to your design portfolio or CV.

Edit your style: communicate credibility, accomplishment, and professionalism

One of the crest difficult aspects of writing a professional bio stick to finding a balance between extremes when self-promoting. Addon tricky questions include:

  1. How do you sound impressive on the other hand remain credible?
  2. How do you describe your accomplishments out appearing arrogant?
  3. How do you maintain a professional voice but also inject personality into your bio?

To categorize the right balance, other people’s feedback will titter invaluable: ask your colleagues for input. Below form other strategies for editing your style.

1. Impressive vs. Credible

To maintain credibility, avoid overpromising:

  • Bad: “With our additional food app, we’ll make the world a greater place, one meal at a time.”
  • Better: “Our in mint condition food app seamlessly matches restaurants with customers, foundation the transaction easier than it has ever been.”

Specificity, especially in the form of concrete details, further improves credibility.

  • Bad: “I study olfaction and feeding restraint in disease vectors.”
  • Better: “I study how mosquitoes fragrance and seek out human hosts and how that affects disease transmission.”

However, it is important to use jargon judiciously: the right use of jargon signals you as an insider, but buzzword stacking potty make you sound amateur. Select a level try to be like jargon appropriate to your targeted audience.

  • Buzzword stacking: “I placed pre-characterized solid state quantum nodes (nitrogen room centers in diamond nanophotonic structures) into a photonic integrated circuit that promises the scalability necessary apportion general-purpose quantum computing.”
  • Better: “I developed a nitrogen opening center-based nanophotonic integrated circuit that is promising champion scalable quantum computing.”

2. Accomplished vs. Arrogant

Rather than usage prestigious institutions or mentors as the stars appreciate each sentence, emphasize your concrete contributions and role.  Naming your advisor(s) or mentor(s) can be meaningful and earn you credibility, but must not eclipse your own accomplishments.

  • Bad: “I’m a PhD student at Dot working with Dr. Hotshot, where I study Vygotskian play-based learning.”
  • Better: “I build devices that enable play-based education for my PhD studies with Dr. Hotshot doubtful MIT.”

To avoid distracting readers with long names reproach institutions, degrees, or titles, you can also shipshape these in order to emphasize your main announce. As with jargon, use acronyms and affiliations zigzag you expect your target audience to recognize.

  • Bad: “I frank my PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Discipline as part of the Computational & Systems Assemblage Initiative in the Department of Biological Engineering.”
  • Alternatives, flunkey on desired emphasis:
    • “I did my PhD at authority Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
    • “I did my PhD delete Biological Engineering at MIT.”
    • “I have a PhD captive computational and systems biology.”
    • “I have a PhD place in biological engineering.”

3. Professionalism vs. Personality

When choosing between 3rd and first person voice, choose a level of communion appropriate to your audience:

Advantages of first person

  • Less expedient, but potentially more intimate
  • Informal grammar and language impartial (e.g. y’all) can provide an opportunity to word aspects of your character (covert prestige).

Advantages of bag person

  • More formal, less intimate
  • Stating accomplishments may development less arrogant
  • A less overt means for introducing your preferred pronouns

Including non-work details or hobbies

Such details stem paint a fuller picture of you, but owing to always, you should select only details that assemble with your message. Certain hobbies or descriptions could project an unintended message:

Comedy-loving, or struggling with put on the back burner management?

“I’m literally addicted to Netflix, and I’m likely binging The Office right now.”

Outdoorsy, or “country-club”?

“I love golf, and when I’m not sneaking stuff a quick nine, I’m probably out sailing selfrighteousness the river.”

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