Writing Your Professional Summary

Follow these guidelines to write a professional summary that communicates your expertise clearly to non-specialists.

Provide sufficient—and sufficiently clear—detail. Briefly describe the research techniques and tools you use as well as your topic. Students want to know what you do so they can judge what they might do as part of your scholarly/research team. Potential collaborators and members of the media want to gauge at a glance whether you have expertise they need.

Include at least one sentence indicating the goal(s) and importance of your work: Will your work help to develop new kinds of treatments? What specific audiences/people does your work help/benefit?: Community pharmacists? Researchers developing new therapeutics? Academicians interested in interprofessional education?

Use separate paragraphs for each topic within your profile. If you’re involved in two research efforts, describe each one in its own paragraph.

Write no more than 300 words.

Use clear, plain-English sentences.

Use first-person pronouns (I, my lab, my research) throughout.

Use strong, active verbs wherever possible.

• Passive verb: A goal of my work is to develop vaccines for. . .
• Changed to an active verb: My work pursues vaccine development for. . .

Do not capitalize areas of research or practice. Use bacteriology and cardiology, not Bacteriology or Cardiology.

Do not repeat what readers will see in your profile, e.g., schools attended. The professional summary is meant to complement the rest of the profile, not repeat it. Repetition quickly turns away readers. 

When something is missing from your profile, readers assume it doesn’t exist. Use UB Profile’s full capabilities to back up your professional summary with greater detail. List all your publications, grants, activities and achievements in the following categories of your UB Profile and update this information regularly.

In the Overview tab, add your professional summary to provide a brief description of your professional accomplishments including your research/scholarly/teaching focus.

Important notes about your professional summary:

• Do not list the titles of your publications in your professional summary; add them in the Publications tab instead.
  
• Do not include time-sensitive information such as pending grants for projects in your professional summary. The information in your professional summary should be able to remain current for at least a year.
  

In the Research tab, use the Expertise field to expand on research you describe in your professional summary, detailing your methodologies, techniques and areas of inquiry for readers who want this information. 

In the Specialty/Research Focus section, use the Specialties categories to specify your areas of research and scholarship specialization.

In the Publications tab, follow the directions for importing your publications automatically from PubMed. Readers will then be able to refer to them for greater detail on your work.

Please refer to the following best practice example when writing your professional summary and creating your UB Profile:

• William Prescott, Jr., PharmD