Training Event Recaps

Giving High-Impact Presentations | SYNERGY Early Career Researcher Training Series 2026-2027

Communication, Collaboration, Teamwork Dissemination, Manuscripts, Abstracts

When: September 14, 2026 | 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM ET

Where: Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Auditorium H or Virtually via Webex

Format: Seminar

Key Learning Objectives

  1. Understand the concept of cognitive load — the mental load/stress placed on the brain when learning new information, and how limited working memory capacity affects learning.
  2. Identify how PowerPoint (and similar tools) can increase cognitive load — e.g., excessive text, extraneous information, poor color choices, split attention between text and visuals, and trying to use slides simultaneously as speaker prompts, complete content, and handouts.
  3. Revise your own lectures to reduce cognitive load on learners — through practical strategies like one learning point per slide, chunking information, using images over text, signaling key information, readable fonts/colors, removing extraneous content, and considering the expert vs. novice composition of the audience.

Watch the Full Session

Petra J. Lewis, MBBS, FACR, FAUR

Petra Lewis gained her medical degree at Guy’s Hospital, London, England. Initial UK training was followed by a Nuclear Medicine Fellowship at Johns Hopkins, two years running a clinical PET center in London, then Radiology residency at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, NH.  She has been on faculty at Geisel Medical School at Dartmouth since 1998, where she is currently a Full Professor in Radiology and OBGYN, and Vice Chair of Education for Radiology.

Her national profile has focused on education in Radiology. She is a prior President of ACER, AMSER and AUR and was the Education Track Chair for the RSNA.  She has won multiple Educator Awards from local and national organizations as well as the AUR Gold Medal in 2021 and the RSNA Outstanding Educator award in 2024.   She has been dedicated to developing shared multiple resources for radiology educators including the AMSER curriculum, STARS, Aquifer, DartRad, ALAAR Scholarly Database and Standardized CV and RadExam.  She is most proud of her Senior Editor role for RadExam which is used by over 80% of radiology residencies. She is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Radiology, a textbook for medical students and has published and lectured extensively nationally and internationally on Radiology education, including innumerable faculty development sessions.