FYI, its a chrome extension that replaces your new tab page with a random real scientific project

Which API is it referring to for getting the projects ?

The examples are mentioned in the landing page itself.

Although it would be great if we can use this for other purposes as well

What purposes/use cases are you looking for ?

There are multiple other tools which are available.

One thing that has always helped me is mugging the first few lines until you can get in your rhythm. Sometimes that glare of hundred eyes causes you to forgot about your talk.