Grads May Have the Next YouTube

Two Professional Master of Engineering graduates and a chemical engineering Ph.D. graduate hope their new web site may be the next YouTube.

Their site, doFlick, is for short videos that show you how to do things—all kinds of things, from how to bend a tube for a science lab to talking with helium to how to make guacamole to demonstrating a drum and bass groove. Users can submit their videos to doFlick and watch other's videos, all at no cost. Advertising sales will support the site.

The brains behind doFlick are Rama Sreenivasan, who received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering in May; Shiva Pandit, who received his Master of Engineering specializing in electrical and computer engineering in May; and Luis Corzo, '05, Master of Engineering specializing in Project Management.

They met in an entrepreneurship class offered by the Clark School's Professional Master of Engineering program and Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (MTECH), each looking to create a business they could get excited about and that could benefit people.

The trio toyed with a lot of ideas, getting together every 2 weeks for a year at Noodles & Co. in College Park after class, searching for something that really grabbed them. Their combined lab experience had shown them that a lot of lab equipment lack instructions. They thought video could help in lots of lab situations and other places where seeing how something is done is better than reading about it.

So the three of them borrowed video cameras and went out to professors and others to record all kinds of things that people want to know how to do. They invested their own money in getting the site ready and are busy telling people about it and talking to investors.

"With doFlick, my goal is to spread the knowledge beyond boundaries," said Pandit. "Having spent my primary school years in the rural areas of southwestern India and with both my parents being primary school teachers, I have the first-hand experience with how difficult it is to get practical knowledge of what we study in school. It is my personal goal to make such information freely available on-demand via doFlick."

Published May 22, 2007