New correspondent: Martijn Wijsman from Delft, the Netherlands


Today our team was joined by an ambassador  from our ‘home’ university TU Delft: Martijn Wijsman, studying Industrial Design Engineering. He is already very familiar with our formula, inspired by it because it might boost radical engineering solutions that help beat climate change.  Martijn is very much motivated to join Cool Down The Planet and to help unroll our video platform. This means: help us find suitable subjects to be featured in his country. But first we asked him to answer some questions.

Martijn, can you introduce yourself?

My name is Martijn Wijsman and I am currently doing my bachelor in Industrial Design Engineering at Delft University of Technology. I love to travel this beautiful planet with my surfboard around my arm and experience new things. I joined cooldowntheplanet in an earlier stage of the project, to help promoting. I am inspired by the vision and drive of the people behind this project. It is really cool that I now can keep contributing to the project as student ambassador.

What motivated you to choose for this study?

Products shape the world around us. They are the extensions of our arms, our brains and our feed. They have to potential to make our life more easy, happy and colourful. An industrial designer is able to translate his or her vision into the physical world by creative problem solving. It’s a very innovative, moving field. These aspects seemed to fit my natural qualities. Before Industrial Design I was studying Aerospace Engineering but found myself being narrowed down by the routinized problem solving. I knew I wanted to do something more creative and therefore chose to make a switch, something I don’t regret at all.

What are your ambitions? How would you like to develop your future career?

Finding out the thing that sparks and inspires me, that I love doing. Inside or outside the field of Industrial Design. And to be honest, I have no idea right know what that would be. But that’s not a problem, I have plenty of time to find it out. I think that when you develop an inner drive and passion for something you do, you will find a way to make a living out of it. Right know I am interested in the field of artificial intelligence. A field that is going to change the world as we know it. So I want learn myself some programming and get to know the basics of how computers and Artificial Intelligence works. Luckely I am inside an academic bowl of candies where I can pick them all freely, and learn what I want to learn.

Do you see any consequences from climate change in your region? If yes, can you give an example?

Yes, I see a lot of results from climate change. Not in the physical world here though, Yes, the average temperature increased in Holland with 1.7 degrees during the last century. But for now it’s not having a big impact on the ecosystem around here. But turn on your TV and you see the icecaps melting down, big forests being destroyed, the ozon layer getting damaged and animal species being driven to extinction. Climate change is a very real thing, which science has proven time after time. For this problem we need a global approach and look beyond our own borders. Here in Holland we might not suffer that much if the average temperature raises further, but up north a whole ecosystem might collapse. Cool Down The Planet is not restricted by country borders and feeds this global approach.

What do you consider is a strong quality of the Cool Down The Planet formula? 

The fact that Cool Down The Planet acts as an platform makes it very promising. Cool Down The Planet has the potential to easily connect an ever-increasing amount of crowd engineers with stakeholders, doubting with engineering problems in the field of climate change. Also, it is designed by an ideal, a vision. To help solving a very urgent problem. If we want to solve this problem we need change, change by radical engineering solutions coming from people and innovative institutions who dare to take steps. Connecting all these minds increases our potential to make that happen.