BEING a world renowned engineering researcher and successful innovator is certainly a career worth boasting about.
Professor Robert Bogdan Staszewski’s reputation is so prominent in his field of work that he was recently given €5m funding to make Ireland a dominant figure for the second wave of the internet.
This week The Gazette spoke to Staszewski to find out exactly what his day-to-day life entails and to see just how different or similar his life is compared to the average person.
“When I wake up, my collaborators might be getting ready for dinner and when I’m going to bed, they might be just getting up so I have to accommodate to different time zones.
“I’m a big coffee drinker, but I stop any coffee consumption after 3pm otherwise I would have difficulty sleeping at night.”
Working as a researcher in UCD Staszewski, who is originally from Poland, says he likes to get some exercise by walking to work most days from his home in Donnybrook.
“I came to Ireland with the whole family back in August and actually drove here from the Netherlands. The weather suits me fine because when I lived in Texas, you would have three months without a single drop of rain in 40 degree heat. I actually quite welcome the rain now and enjoy it.
The second wave
“I was given €5m recently to hire a team of 13 PhD students and some staff to work on the communication and assessing part of IOT [Internet of Things], which is the second wave of the internet.
“By 2020, people will become less of a centre spot in the internet and the devices in your home will be talking to each other for the purpose of making our lives much more comfortable. For example, if you’re out of milk your refrigerator will be able to send info to your phone to tell you to pick some up.”
Staszewski gets home anytime between 7pm and 10pm.
“The good thing about this is that my boys don’t like to go to bed early, so I get to spend some time with them.”
Asked if he does the typical things online that the average person would do, Staszewski said: “I’m very old-fashioned in the way I use the internet. I would mainly use it for emails and would only go on the likes of Facebook out of necessity.
“The time I go to bed varies. Depending on who I’m collaborating with I sometimes wouldn’t get to bed until about 3am, which is the joy of working in a connected world.”
