Jean-Luc Lebrun has managed research programs while working at Apple Computer in its Advanced Technology Research group for over ten years. He subsequently invested his energy in the commercialization of research. He teaches scientific writing at the following A-Star* research Institutes: BII, BSF, BTI, CMM, DSI, GIS, I2R, IBN, ICES, IHPC, IMB, IME, IMRE, NMC, SBIC, SIMTECH, SISC, and SSCC. He also provided this course at NUS (National University of Singapore) and SMU (Singapore Management University), and at medical research Institutes within SGH (Singapore General Hospital).

*Agency for Science, Technology And Research. Singapore
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Course Synopsis
This course is based on the book “Scientific Writing: a Reader and Writer’s guide”. It helps identify and articulate the differences between efficient and deficient scientific writing.
Through many in-class exercises, it promotes good scientific writing habits such as conciseness and clarity. The course material is mostly provided by the participants: they bring a published or unpublished paper (4 to 10 pages) to the course and learn how to evaluate and improve documents of the same type. The book containing the course material is given to each participant.

Career opportunities
Good scientific writing skills open up many opportunities to the researcher: publications, conference or seminar attendance. They also lead to better patents, better research partnerships and better funded research. Clarity and efficiency in scientific writing bears witness to the quality of a researcher; it influences career promotion.

Target participants
Graduates & postgraduates who recently joined a Research Institute. Researchers who wish to improve their scientific writing skills (seasoned researchers have indicated how much they have benefited from this course, even after writing more than 20 papers). Researchers whose native language is not English and who struggle with the sentence structure and the correct use of parts of speech in the English language.

Course structure
Introduction: “Write to be read” - a reader and “super-reader” perspective

Module 1: The ‘Why’ and the ‘How’ of each item in a standard
scientific paper structure: title, abstract, introduction, body
(headings, subheadings, tables and graphs), conclusion, and
references.

Module 2: The writing process and the writing strategy

Module 3: Elementary principles of composition: reaching
clarity, conciseness, precision and fluidity in writing

Module 4: Identification of writing problems: a walkthrough process to detect structural problems at the sentence, paragraph, and paper level

Mode of assessment
Participants bring their own writing sample. At the end of the course, this sample is significantly improved.