Experience

• 

  VigyanShaala International

  • India

  • Lead, Curriculum Development

    • Jan 2021 - Present
    • India

    As a Lead of Curriculum Development at VigyanShaala, I am developing coursework for undergraduate women coming from marginalized backgrounds to equip them with tools for continuous self-development and nurturing their scientific temperament to accelerate their trajectories into various STEM careers. I believe this will aid to bridge the gap of gender inequality and bring diversity and inclusivity.

• 

  Northwestern University

  • United States
  • Higher Education
  • 700 & Above Employee

  • Postdoctoral Fellow

    • Apr 2018 - Dec 2020

    I designed and developed a project that focused on the behavior of complex fluids under extreme mechanical stress. Probing the dynamics of drop impact of colloidal suspension helps in understanding the complicated interplay between hydrodynamic instability and non-trivial rheology. This work resulted in NSF funding for the project: Suspension flows at extreme shear rates.I also planned and optimized other projects in the lab. 1. Synthesis of colloidal particles through solution chemistry to explore the shape anisotropy, stabilization, and stiffness. 2. Polymeric gel rupturing during dynamic swelling, and 3. Understanding the precarious nature of drying colloidal droplets on a solid substrate.

  • Research Mentor & Educator

    • Apr 2018 - Dec 2020

    During my postdoctoral research, I developed an “interactive mentorship philosophy” to train high school and undergraduate students in a university lab environment setting. This helped them with building the confidence and curiosity to unfold the conundrum of university lab research. I established and worked on different research projects at Northwestern university that paved the path for 12 students to explore research in soft matter physics under my mentorship. Experience gained by students:- through scientific inquiry and learning experimental techniques with proper safety practices- research questions, procedural design, data collection, data analysis, drawing conclusions, and scientific communication.- presenting results of project work in various workshops and conferences- 1 co-authored peer-reviewed publication.

  • Science Communicator & Public Engagement Volunteer

    • 2018 - 2020

    I actively engaged myself in outreach programs at Northwestern University (NU). I conducted scientific inquiry-based lab demos at NU for school and undergraduate students from mid-west USA. I also participated in diverse scientific communication platforms such as • Lab tour guide: introduced middle school and high school students from Chicagoland to the fascinating phenomenon of drop splash on a solid substrate in the Career Day for Girls (CDFG) event organized by the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), Northwestern University, 2020.• Lab demo and a voice: demonstrated the experiments on high-speed imaging to the undergraduate women in Physics and participated in the Networking fair to help undergraduates to understand the role of a Postdoc in the institute/ national lab/ industry in the “Ask a Postdoc” poster session at the APS Cuwip event hosted by Northwestern University, 2019.• Communication platform: to unfold the conundrum of university lab research, I participated in the “Interaction with Evanston township high school students” organized by Northwestern’s scientific image committee, 2018. • Lab activity: organized for the EXCEL Summer students from Northwestern University to demonstrate the Newtonian drop impact dynamics on solid substrate, 2018.

• 

  University of Montpellier

  • Montpellier Area, France

  • Marie Curie PhD Fellow

    • Mar 2014 - May 2017
    • Montpellier Area, France

    Thesis - 'Drops, beads, and filaments of gels under extreme deformations 'Gels consist of three-dimensional networks that span the whole volume of a liquid medium. The internal network structure results from permanent or transient bonds. In the first case, the gels behave as soft solids whereas in the second case, they behave as viscoelastic fluids. Gels, because of their softness, are easy to deform hugely and eventually to fail by mechanical means. In this thesis, we investigate the behavior of transient self-assembled and permanently cross-linked gels subjected to extreme mechanical stresses. Two different techniques are used to impose large extensional deformations. In one class of experiments, we study the dynamics of freely expanding sheets produced by impacting a drop or bead on solid surfaces in minimal dissipation conditions, achieved using either a small solid target or a repellent surface. In another class of experiments, we study the fracture of reversible double transient networks by coupling extensional rheology to fast imaging of the stretching filament.

• 

  Solvay

  • Paris Area, France

  • Optimization of chemically crosslinked gels for loss circulation

    • Jul 2016 - Jul 2016
    • Paris Area, France

    To optimize the chemically crosslinked gels for loss circulation.

• 

  Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research

  • Bengaluru Area, India

  • R&D Assistant - Department of Science and Technology Fellowship

    • Aug 2011 - Dec 2013
    • Bengaluru Area, India

    My role was to synthesize colloidal particles, optimize their stabilization, and in due course, synthesize fluorescent colloids for better acquisition of images through confocal microscopy. Another aspect was to explore the impact of particle shape anisotropy on the rheological properties of dense suspensions by coupling the confocal microscope to the rheometer.

• 

  Delhi University

  • Delhi, India

  • Master's Thesis

    • Jan 2011 - Apr 2011
    • Delhi, India

    MSc Dissertation: Investigation on Bio-Active Mesoporous Glasses.Bioactive glasses have high potential as scaffold materials as they stimulate bone cells to produce new bones, they are degradable in the body and they bond to bone. Materials with porous architecture and high surface area are being developed for advanced technical uses such as catalysts, molecular sieves, zeolites, hybrid optics, Biomaterials, etc. There has been great interest in the fabrication of well-ordered mesoporous glasses. I used the sol-gel technique for the sample preparation and used characterization techniques, XRD, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, TGA/DSC, BET analysis, TEM, and Impedance spectroscopy to investigate the properties and finally examine their promising nature in various clinical applications.