A short video by Dr. Pawelczak on his research project called Wisent suddenly drew near 50.000 hits on Youtube. How did he do that?
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A typical TU Delft TV production attracts 500-1000 viewers. The TU Delft TV – Short | Wisent video attracted 50-100 times more viewers. In the 1-minute video Dr. Przemysław Pawełczak (Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Sciences) presents his research project on a reprogrammable chip, called WISP, that harvests its energy from ambient radiofrequency radiation. Wisent is an acronym for Wirelessly Sent and another name for a European Bison – an animal very popular in the country where Dr. Pawełczak is from: Poland.
Pawełczak believes that collaboration of his team of former and current students (Jethro Tan, Henko Aantjes, Ivar in ’t Veen, and Amjad Majid, among others) with his collegues Aaron Parks and Joshua Smith from the University of Washington in Seattle played a significant role in the video going viral. “Joshua and Aaron represent a very well known and established research group generating many exciting results in super-low power communication. Just after one article about WISP and WISENT on one of US websites the video started to be cross-posted from one website onto another,” he noticed. It also helped that the core idea of a reprogrammable sensor without the need for batteries or external power is appealing. People can instantly imagine useful applications.
Asked what he would recommend to colleagues looking for publicizing their research results, Pawełczak came up with the following list:
• Make sure you can communicate your research to a large number of people;
• Team up with related research groups outside of TU Delft to broader the audience of your research;
• Develop a networking strategy and carefully plan your timing;
• Produce shareable content on your project (WISENT is open-source, with all results reproducible).
The scientific publication about WISENT appeared in the proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM 2016 last month.
TU Delft TV / TU Delft TV is a collaboration between Delta and the Science Centre. The crew consists of TU Delft students.
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