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Sonal Rangnekar

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Contemporary art is always my favorite, and the @indianapolismuseumofart did not disappoint! Here are some of my favorite installations ✨ . 1️⃣ “All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” by Yayoi Kusama. This bright orange infinity room felt like an endless neon pumpkin patch. . 2️⃣ Untitled by Tara Donovan - This sculpture looks like shiny bubbles, perhaps the suds when I’m scrubbing graphene residue out of a beaker. But despite the spherical shape, most of this sculpture is negative volume. Each of the spheres is made of cones of Mylar that give the flower-like pattern on the surface. . 3️⃣&4️⃣ This felt like an inverted concept of “standing on the shoulders of giants”, a phrase used by scientists to describe how our work is made possible by the greats before us. It’s hard to tell if the miniature people are supporting the people above them or simply trying to not be crushed. Maybe they’re the grad students holding up the “greats” 😂 . Thanks to @aceapurva for exploring with me!

So excited to see this article on 2D materials in the @nytimes today! Even more special is the feature on @berkeleylab, where I did my undergrad research (although not in 2D materials). Link in bio for those who want to read more! . . #2D #2Dmaterials #nytimes #materialscience #scicomm #lawrenceberkeleylab #lbnl #research #science #chemistry #physics #graphene #nano #nanomaterials #semiconductor #silicon #siliconvalley #phd #phdlife #scientistsofinstagram #sonalslabnotebook

✨New Year, New Introduction ✨ One of my goals for this year is to be more involved in the science community on IG, so let’s do reintroductions! (Thanks @soph.talks.science for the inspo 😊) Please introduce yourself 👋🏽 in the comments so I can say hi back! . My name is Sonal and I made @sonals.lab.notebook to share my love for science and dance with the world! In this way, my IG page is a “lab notebook”, where life is my experiment 😁 . 👩🏾‍🔬I’m a PhD student at @northwesternu studying Materials Science and Engineering. I focus on developing inks for printed electronics - just think, what if your printer at home could print its own computer chips?! Of course, the tech is quite far from that possibility (right now), but maybe my PhD projects will get us one step closer 🤞🏽 . 🖨 I use #aerosonaland to talk about the work I do with aerosol jet printing, a new printing method that allows us to make patterns as small as 20 microns. That’s about 10x smaller than the diameter of your hair! . ✏️ I also love to write about science in a way that everyone can understand, and I’m hoping to publish some short pieces this year! Last year, I wrote an article on Julia and Hans Weertman, a power couple 👩🏼‍🔬🧑🏼‍🔬 in the field of materials science, that was published in MRS Bulletin.

Stepping into 2020 like ✨✨✨

You can make bold, exciting changes to your life any day of the week, but there’s something extra special about doing it at the beginning of a new calendar year. Wishing you a year (and a decade) of creativity. ✨

Stepping into 2020 like ✨✨✨

✨Celebrating some more small-big victories of 2019. This year marked a major turning point in my PhD career: I learned how to print pretty colors! ✨ ⠀⠀ This picture is of many printing experiments on a single chip of SiO2. After years of struggling to find the ideal inks and printing conditions, I know what a good printed film looks like. ✅“Good” printed films (2nd column) have smooth surfaces that reflect light evenly. The color is related to how thick the film is. ❌ “Bad” printed films are rough and scatter light so that they look dark blue/black/speckled. This is a major result that will lay the foundation for my dissertation! 🙏🏽😁

Got to dress cute last week for the group holiday party! Always grateful to work with this incredibly friendly, supportive, and collaborative group of scientists. 🎄👩‍🔬🎄🧑‍🔬🎄

Last @meherdance videoshoot of the year and it was jawani-licious 😉✨can’t wait to make more magic with this team in the new year ❤️

Last Friday I moderated 🎤my very first panel in partnership with the Royal Society of Chemistry and Materials Chemistry Frontiers! We had six gracious professors share stories from their careers about how they have boldly 💪 believed in themselves and used their voices. It was fun stepping into the facilitator role to prepare questions and engage the panelists! And getting to dress up for work for once was nice 😁 #labrat

I 💜 museums so much, and @cooperhewitt in NYC is a new favorite. Got to spend an afternoon nerding out about the ways in which science, art, and design intersect in these exhibits. Swipe ➡️ to see some of the highlights! 1) Handcrafted insect models 🦋🐝🐛flutter inside glass jars. The movement is triggered by body heat, which means more fluttering when there’s a lot of people in the room. Kinda makes sense 😄 2) Data visualization of disease progression - a more somber piece in which the artist tracks her daughter’s bruising patterns through beautifully colored petals 🌹 3) Babylegs - an ocean filtration system that uses children’s sheer leggings👖 to capture micro plastics. It’s scary to see the sheer quantity of plastic that floats around in the ocean. 4) A morbid favorite - the cotton funeral suit that contains fungal spores to accelerate decomposition and natural recycling of the body 💀.

🎃Happy Halloween everyone!👻 Here’s a throwback to one of my favorite DIY costumes. My name is Diana Francis Taylor (call me DFT) and I'm your neighborhood quantum mechanic! I'm great at putting together the elements of the periodic table (my favorite element is berkelium of course). Give me a call if you have a band gap that needs a tune up! Keep it safe this Halloween, and don't let your friends Position and Momentum get in an Uber together. It's illegal in every state (stationary or otherwise) for them to commute! /puns