In 2021 David Fernandez Rivas will be the UT employee who appears most often in the media. Last year, the Cuban researcher at the University of Twente's Faculty of Science & Technology was voted Dutch Engineer of the Year and received a great deal of attention for his research into needle-free injection. The UT in the Media Award was presented during the University of Twente's New Year's Eve event, which was held this morning.
David's work attracted a great deal of attention, particularly internationally. News articles appeared in the Daily Mail and the New York Post, among others, and news about David's discovery appeared in dozens of different languages.
Climate scientist Maarten van Aalst also made regular appearances in the media, coming in second. In addition to his professorship at the ITC faculty, Maarten is also director of the Red Cross Climate Centre. He was a much sought-after expert by numerous media, for example, CNN and The Guardian.
Remarkably, the numbers one and two from the UT in the Media Award were mainly present in the international media. The number three in the list, Lisette van Gemert-Pijnen (Faculty of BMS), received a lot of attention nationally, due to her contribution to the evaluations of the CoronaMelder app.
Among the students, the media award went to Solar Team Twente, which won the Solar Challenge in Morocco in October, thus generating a lot of interest. Christoff Heunis was the PhD student who generated the most media attention.
Richard Stevens was the most successful UT employee on social media. His posts on Twitter generated the most interaction.
Watch the presentation of the awards by Executive Board president Vinod Subramaniam.
Media attention
In total, the UT, its staff and students were in the media some 8,500 times in 2021. The number of appearances in international media was slightly higher than the number in national media. Not surprisingly, the UT was mentioned most often on the website of the regional newspaper Tubantia: 413 times. In the national newspapers, the UT was mentioned most often in De Volkskrant: 79 times.
The video below provides a good insight into the media appearances of the UT's staff.