“As the saying goes, in a PhD, you know more and more about less and less,” quipped Vijay Somandepalli, co-chair of the Graduate Student Programming Board, or GSPB.

Accordingly, the more doctoral students learn about one subject, the more difficult it becomes for them to explain their work to their peers in different fields.

To remedy this problem, the GSPB has spearheaded an initiative to give those heavily involved in research a chance to work on their communication skills, so that they can present their work in layman’s terms.

In coordination with the Office of the Dean of Research and Graduate Policy and the Graduate Life Office, the GSPB will be holding an I-Rite mixer on April 14 at 6 p.m. in the Havana Room at the Graduate Community Center. The I-Rite program is designed to help graduate students present their research sans technical jargon.

Students who attend will be offered free dinner, a seminar on communication skills from Carolyn Gale of the Stanford Research Communication Program and a chance to meet one-on-one with a student from a different department to practice presenting their research in simpler, easily understandable terms.

Somandepalli said that the people hosting the event are “acutely aware of the fact that advanced graduate students become more and more isolated as their research becomes more important.”

He added that “these graduate students interact with fewer people — mostly people in their own research groups and maybe their departments at best.”

The event is advertised as an opportunity to “explain your research in Elevator-speak.” When presenting research, the two most common problems that graduate students face are anxiety and the tendency to use too much complex language. By allowing them to work face-to-face with another graduate student, and by matching science students with non-science students, the event coordinators hope that they will be able to assist graduate students with both problems.

The goal for each graduate student is to be able to come up with a 30-second summary of his or her research that could be understood by a general audience.

“This way, the pairs of students learn about other research in the University, learn to communicate with other students and meet students from various departments,” Somandepalli said.

To participate, students are required to sign up online and roughly 40 students will be chosen by lottery from the overall pool of applicants. The GSPB will attempt to ensure that an equal number of science and non-science students are selected.

Somandepalli called the event on April 14 a “pilot mixer,” adding that “many more will be planned for the summer and for the next academic year.”