European Researchers’ Night 2020 - Palermo

The European Researchers' Night (27 November 2020), funded under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions and Horizon 2020, brings researchers closer to the public, especially for non-expert people and young students. The event provides researchers the opportunity to showcase science's diversity and its impact on citizens' daily lives and stimulate interest in research careers.

SHARPER - SHAring Researchers' Passions for Evolving Responsibility - is one of the 7 Italian projects supported by the European Commission for the European Researchers' Night in 2020. In Italy, SHARPER 2020 organized hundreds of events broadcast online from 13 Italian cities: Ancona, Cagliari, Camerino, Catania, L'Aquila, Macerata, Nuoro, Palermo, Pavia, Perugia, Terni, Turin, and Trieste.

Our team is made up of Ilenia Tinnirello (Associate Professor), Stefano Mangione (Associate  Professor), and Ngo Trung Kien (Ph.D. Student) from Universita degli Studi di Palermo. We participated in the European Researchers' Night to present the "Internet Of Light" topic, to raise public awareness about Visible Light Communication (VLC).

The goal of "Internet of Light" event is to show all the potential of VLC to the public and VLC's applications that can bring a massive impact on society. During the event, we prepared an introductory presentation on Visible Light Communications and its applications, followed on request on a more technical presentation about issues related to the integration between VLC and WiFi. During the introductory presentation, we also showed two videos, taken within the H2020 project Englihtem, a European Training Network on VLCs, and in particular we presented the OpenVLC platform, which is widely used for academic researches on VLC. We also presented more technical advanced presentations for academic audiences to explain VLC and LED technology's secrets. During the European Researchers' Night, Ngo Trung Kien shared his research experience as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Ph.D. fellowship during his time in Italy.

After the event, we received positive feedback from all of the attendants. We recorded a short video of the event, so that more people who were not able to attend the event on-line can have some brief view about the breaking through of VLC in the future of communication technology.  The presentation showed in this video.

The project's future results can be followed on the website www.enlightem.eu, as well as on the social media of the ENLIGHT’EM project.