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Albert Einstein would have loved PhD TV.

The iconic physicist was one of the first scientists to encourage his colleagues to explain their research simply.

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t really understand it,” he said.

So he would have been proud of UWA PhD candidate Gino Putrino whose research project in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering has been made into a two-minute cartoon which can be seen on YouTube.

Gino is one of 12 winners of a world-wide competition for researchers to reduce their work to simple visual ideas that can be understood by everybody.

Animation artist Jorge Cham, creation of PhD comics and the 2011 film Pile Higher and Deeper: the Movie , created the cartoons for the winners and this year one thesis a month is being put up on the PhD TV site.

Gino, whose research is aimed at helping to detect lung cancer, was the only West Australian finalist chosen from among more than 200 competitors. One other Australian, Sara Ciesielski from the University of Melbourne is in the final 12.

He uses part of his research to explain how you could build an artificial nose using micro-electro-mechanical sensors.

Gino’s work on this project, which has three patents pending so far, is in collaboration with Winthrop Professor John Dell, Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics; Winthrop Professor Lorenzo Faraone, Director of the Centre for Semiconductor Optoelectronics and Microsystems; Professor Adrian Keating in the School of Mechanical and Engineering; and Professor Mariusz Martyniuk in the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering.