December 8, 2025 at 12:00 PM ET
Sharing Your Work More Broadly for Impact, Collaboration, and Funding
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Summary of our December 8, 2025 webinar with Julia Barzyk, Founder of Wise Investigator
As the final session in Atom’s 2025 AI and Research webinar series, we welcomed grant strategist and former US Army Research Office program manager Julia Barzyk for a practical and energizing talk on how researchers can strengthen their online presence and increase the visibility of their work.
The central theme was simple but powerful. Publications are only one form of dissemination. In a digital research ecosystem shaped by search engines, AI, and decentralized discovery, researchers who share their work clearly and consistently online are far more likely to be found, funded, and invited into collaborations.
This blog captures the key insights, examples, and tactics Julia shared.
Most researchers imagine the grant process as beginning with an opportunity search and culminating in a proposal. Julia reframed the process as a continuum where visibility and trust begin long before writing.
Funders, reviewers, mentors, journalists, and even colleagues in your own department routinely search for you online. What they see in those first moments influences whether they believe you are credible, whether they understand your expertise, and whether they perceive your work as relevant and current.
A clear online identity reduces doubt. Doubt creates friction. Clarity builds trust.
Julia broke identity down into several platforms researchers can directly control. Her advice focused on simple, high impact fixes that take less than an hour to implement.
Your.edu domain carries high trust, so make good use of it. Julia recommends:
Key steps include:
Most researchers underuse ORCID. Julia highlighted that it supports:
LinkedIn is increasingly important for funders, students, and journalists. Julia urged researchers to:
Her message throughout this section was to avoid being caught in “digital pajamas.” When someone requests a headshot, bio, or link, you want to feel ready rather than scrambling to clean outdated pages.
Once identity is consistent, researchers can turn to content. Julia framed content as a vital part of modern dissemination because it helps many different audiences understand and share your work.
She emphasized that nothing is too basic. What feels ordinary to you may be eye opening to students, journalists, or practitioners in other fields.
A strong content footprint supports:
One of the most striking points was how often colleagues discover each other’s work not through departmental communication but through LinkedIn or YouTube.
Julia shared several stories that showed how small online actions can lead to big outcomes.
These examples demonstrate how discoverability shapes opportunity. Researchers who communicate clearly make it easier for serendipity to find them.
To help researchers adapt to AI driven search, Julia offered guidance on crafting descriptions rich in specific keywords, methods, populations, and applications.
As Atom’s founder Tom noted during the discussion, question and answer formats are particularly effective, since large language models often rely heavily on structured question driven content. For example:
This structure increases the likelihood that AI powered tools will surface your work to the right audiences.
Julia addressed common concerns about copyright or misinterpretation. Her advice:
Sharing thoughtfully is far more valuable than retreating from public engagement.
Officially, reviewers evaluate only the proposal. In reality, everyone Googles. A clear online identity gives evaluators confidence and reduces uncertainty. You cannot control their perception of your competitors, but you can control the clarity of your own story.
The research funding process is long, and writing proposals is only one part of the journey. A strong online presence strengthens every other stage. Researchers who take even one hour to tidy profiles, update bios, and share clear summaries put themselves in a far better position to be found, trusted, funded, and invited into valuable collaborations.
If you missed the live session, we invite you to watch the recorded webinar. It is packed with examples, actionable guidance, and insights that can help researchers everywhere increase their impact.