Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep8. Energy Harvesting Nanotech Fibres for Wearables and Women in Science with Sohini Kar-Narayan
265 Plays8 months ago
🎉 In this episode as we celebrate Women’s Day in March 2024, we have a very special guest - Prof. Sohini Kar-Narayan, a leading material scientist and nanotechnology expert from the University of Cambridge, sharing with us about her passion for science and her work with nano materials for energy harvesting and self-powered sensing technology, and it’s potential for smart textiles and wearables.
🧪 This is also the story about a young girl who wanted to invent something and went on to become, among many things, one of the Top 50 Influential Women in Engineering in 2021. She was the recipient of the World Economic Forum Young Scientist Award in 2015, the Peter Day Award in 2023 and many other prestigious awards over the years. You can find out more about this on her Wiki page.
👩🏽🔬 Here, Sohini shares some of the challenges she faced as a woman navigating a career in academia in Science. From her position of leadership today, she is keen to encourage more people to explore science and gives valuable insights for others, especially women, who might be considering a career in these areas.
📍 Sohini not only invented many thing but is using one of her invention to transform the effectiveness of hip surgeries with the force-sensing technology in her startup ArtioSense so learn more about this here as well. She also candidly shares about navigating the world of start ups, the new skills she has had to pick up compared to her life as an academic researcher. I have been there and I know this is a difficult transition so if you are in a similar place, do join us to learn more from Sohini.
If you are interested to learn more about Sohini's research and startup, please check out the links below:
University of Cambridge - Research
Artiosense - force sensing technology startup
Connect with Mili Tharakan
Insta: @noordinarycloth
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjtharakan/
Cover art: Photo by Siora, Photography on Unsplash
Music: Inspired Ambient, Orchestraman
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello, hello, and welcome back, friends, to another episode of the No Ordinary Cloth podcast, where we stitch together a tapestry of innovations in textiles and fashion one episode at a time.
Meet Dr. Shohini Khard Narayan
00:00:13
Speaker
As we celebrate Women's Day in March, I'm thrilled to bring you Dr. Shohini Khard Narayan, a leading material scientist and professor at the University of Cambridge, who has also been recognized as one of the top 50 influential women in engineering.
Shohini's Career Journey
00:00:29
Speaker
It is such an honor to have her with us today as she shares about her dreams as a young girl to invent something and how she navigated the world of science as a woman to become an influential leader and her recent work using nanotechnology for energy harvesting solutions, which I believe has exciting potential in smart textiles and wearable products.
Collaboration in Fashion and Science
00:00:50
Speaker
I'm particularly looking forward to this conversation because Johini doesn't come with a background in textiles, but she's been developing interesting solutions which could be easily applicable to textiles. And I love it when experts from other industries start to find crossovers and drift into textiles. It is at these intersections that the most creative and innovative solutions are born.
00:01:13
Speaker
Here, Sohini speaks with such passion and love for science and the importance of building bridges between fashion and textile sectors and the science and engineering communities to develop solutions to some of our industry's biggest challenges.
Shohini's Background and Inspiration
00:01:28
Speaker
Now, let's dive in and hear from Sohini and her world of material science.
00:01:34
Speaker
Hi, Shohni. It is such a privilege and pleasure to have you today with us on the No Ordinary Club Podcast. Thank you so much for your time. I'm really excited to pick your brains all about nanotechnology because this is one area I know very little about.
00:01:49
Speaker
And you really are the expert in the field. You've done such groundbreaking work and hopefully we'll go a lot deeper into that today. You've also been the recipient of so many prestigious awards throughout your career, including the World Economic Forum Young Scientist Award and the top 50 influential women in engineering to name just a few. I know we're going to learn a lot from you by the end of this chat and I'm really excited to dive right in.
00:02:15
Speaker
I'd always like to start with getting to know my guests a little bit and where they grew up, where they were born and what life was like when they were a young teenager. So would you like to just give us an idea of where you were born and where you grew up?
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah, of course. First off, thank you so much for, for having me on your podcast. It's a real pleasure to be here to speak with you. Yeah. So I was, I was born and brought up in Nigeria. I grew up in a city called Kaduna, which is sort of the north of the country. I finished school there before moving to India with my family, where I enrolled for an undergraduate program and then, you know, moved on to my master's and PhD, but yeah, my entire childhood.
00:02:56
Speaker
including my teenage years were in Nigeria and I have the fondest memories of growing up. Yeah, life was, you know, as far as I can remember and recall, you know, happy, normal childhood slash teenage years.
Physics to Material Science
00:03:13
Speaker
I do remember being drawn to science and engineering from a very early age, partly because of my parents. So my dad's a physicist and he was teaching at the federal Polytechnic there. And so I naturally had this love of science from him, but my mother, although, you know, she, so she was a school teacher there and she didn't have a traditional science, you know, education, but she was very resourceful and, you know, she, she was really good with her hand that she could fix things. And, and I think I get a lot of that.
00:03:42
Speaker
from her as well, you know, the curiosity about things and then trying to figure out, you know, how they work and when they don't work, trying to fix them. That I get from my job, I have to say. Nice. Yeah. Currently you're in the UK, but prior to that, you were in India where you did your undergrad all the way up to PhD. And before that you were in Nigeria. That's three different continents. Could you tell me something you love about each of these countries that you've lived in?
00:04:06
Speaker
With Nigeria, I would say, you know, I was just blessed to have an absolutely wonderful childhood. And all my childhood memories are about, you know, playing outdoors. That sort of has stuck with me. For me, I think that would be my favorite memory of Nigeria, you know, just playing outside, climbing trees, you know, doing all that stuff.
00:04:25
Speaker
India, I guess, I spent my my formative years. And again, it's really where I guess my love for science and engineering really got cemented. And then that's something I really love about that the period of my life. But of course, other than that, you know, my family, extended family, friends from India, they have played a huge role in my life. So I always associate that part with kind of where I yeah, like I said, my my formative years. Of course, I love the food. Oh, yes.
00:04:53
Speaker
And the UK really right now is home. You know, this is where my kids were born. This is, you know, we've set down our roots. This is just where home is at. As a young girl, you know, say in your early teens, what did you dream of becoming when you grew up? I always wanted to teach in some way because both my parents essentially, you know, they were teachers.
00:05:15
Speaker
And I liked that. And even when I was growing up, I remember wanting to do that either for my peers or offering lessons to help them with their studies. So that was something I always had. But at the same time, I knew I always wanted to invent something, I think, or make something that would help the world in some way, I guess. So I think in a way, my
00:05:37
Speaker
current profession allows me to do both of those things, which is great. And today you are an accomplished and globally recognized material scientist who have invented things, which we'll talk more about. Tell us a bit about that journey. How did you get interested in material science specifically as a career path?
00:05:54
Speaker
Well, actually I trained as a physicist. So my PhD is in physics, yeah, in experimental condensed matter physics. And then when I finished that and I moved to Cambridge, I ended up in a material science department. And it took me a while to figure out what, you know, what that was all about. And it is a very interdisciplinary subject.
00:06:15
Speaker
which is why as a physicist I could make my way here. And what I realized is that prior to coming to Cambridge, I would do measurements on various samples. I'm trying to understand.
00:06:27
Speaker
their properties. What I found out was material science actually, you know, stretches that out a little bit more. So it looks at how the structure of a material affects its properties, and importantly, how the way you make the material affects the structure, which then affects the property. So it's sort of this relationship between processing structure and properties.
00:06:49
Speaker
So, before I moved to Cambridge, I never really made anything I, like I said, measurements on samples that were provided to me by collaborators or colleagues. And now, you know, I find myself actually making things because when you start to make things, you can.
00:07:04
Speaker
just like I said, by changing the way you make them, you can alter the structure of these materials and then therefore change their properties or control their properties or tune their properties, which is also kind of where nanoscience and nanotechnology features, because we're talking about working with materials at a very small length scale. So we're downsizing to an extent where it actually becomes almost easier to control the structure of material on that small scale. And that's where you sort of start to see these interesting
00:07:33
Speaker
physical properties emerge, which you would not normally see in bulk. So that's sort of where my fascination for material science really came about, the fact that we could actually alter or control properties at that length scale. Nice. So within material science, you narrow down on nanomaterials. How do you explain nanotechnology in layman's term?
00:07:56
Speaker
Yeah, so nanotechnology, I mean, deals with the science of the very, very small. So we're talking about materials at the nanometer scale. So this is like a million times smaller than the breadth of a hair, say.
00:08:11
Speaker
on that scale. So the reason we work down at these levels is because it's easier for us to manipulate atoms at that length scale, because one, we're just working with fewer atoms. But also at that length scale, materials which, again, in the bulk have certain properties, they probably start to change completely. And then you can start to see more interesting or exotic properties that start to present themselves at that scale. And that's kind of where nanotechnology is at. You're trying to exploit these effects
00:08:41
Speaker
in materials at that length scale. So from a material science point of view, this is a great system because it means, you know, we have somewhat greater control over how we process these materials, how we make them, which has a direct effect on the structures that we see, which then affects the properties.
00:08:59
Speaker
That's sort of the angle that we're coming from.
Nanotechnology and Energy Harvesting
00:09:03
Speaker
Your work has been about developing nanomaterials for energy harvesting and for self-powered sensing technology, right? Could you explain this particular technology and what some of the real world applications are for them that you've been working with?
00:09:17
Speaker
So the way to think about energy harvesting is you're basically trying to scavenge energy that is in the environment that is otherwise going to waste. You basically have to capture this and convert it into usable electricity. And if you think of what are the energy sources in the environment, you can think of there's the sun, of course, there's light. And then of course the sun is an abundant source of energy, but for a lot of applications, it may not be the most convenient or accessible.
00:09:44
Speaker
So in my lab, we've been focusing more on ambient mechanical vibrations because as I say, you're never too far from something that's moving or vibrating and that includes ourselves, our bodies, we're constantly in motion. And so the idea is to come up with ways with technologies that allow us to harvest energy from these ambient mechanical vibrations and convert that into usable electricity that can then go onto power sensors, which may be
00:10:11
Speaker
embedded or implanted within the environment such that they can sort of run off the energy in the environment that they operate. So there are materials that are capable of converting mechanical to electrical energy, but of course we also want these to sort of seamlessly merge into the environment that they're operating, often to power sensors that are really small. So again that's where the lens scale comes in and that's why we work with nanomaterials because we're
00:10:38
Speaker
One is we want to enhance the energy harvesting properties of these materials and we are able to do so when we work at the nanoscale. One of the reasons is because we can reduce things like defects or disorder in the system, which often hampers the material's ability to harvest energy. So that's the reason we work at that scale, but also because we want to make smaller devices in general.
00:10:58
Speaker
So the technologies that we are currently developing involve materials which are called piezoelectric materials, which naturally have the ability to convert mechanical to electrical energy. But we also work with materials that exhibit what's known as tribe electricity. So these are essentially, if you think of.
00:11:12
Speaker
pairs of materials which you bring into contact, you rub them, there's some friction between them, and there's some charge that is transferred between them. So we know of this, we're all probably aware of static, when you go to open a door handle, for instance, it is that effect. And essentially what we're trying to do is, because it's a surface effect, so the greater the surface area that is partaking in this exchange in charge, the more the charge that can be generated.
00:11:38
Speaker
So by nanostructuring surfaces, so by introducing features at the nanoscale, you can greatly enhance the surface area, which helps. But then also by introducing nanostructure to certain classes of material, you improve their surface charge properties, which again, allows you to extract a great amount of electricity through this effect. How much energy can be harvested in this way? Is it really to a point that is usable?
00:12:05
Speaker
So this is a very good question. It depends very much on the environment that you're in. If you are in an environment where there's a lot of heavy machinery, there's a large source of mechanical energy, then you may be able to extract a significant portion of that. Whereas if you think of the human body, yes, we are generating quite a lot of mechanical energy, but then
00:12:26
Speaker
how much of that is actually, well, first of all, harvestable and then usable depends very much on the actual action. So, you know, imagine jogging versus, you know, just sitting at your, yeah. So, so it depends, the amount of energy that's available depends very much on, on the environment. But I will say this, that it's, these are low level vibrations. So.
00:12:45
Speaker
We're not talking, you know, huge amounts of energy. We're typically talking a few milliwatts per centimeter cube in the environment of which you would harvest a small percentage. And that's due to the natural inefficiencies that present themselves in these types of energy harvesters. But having said that, even though these are low level ambient vibrations,
00:13:04
Speaker
The sensors that we're trying to power, so we're not trying to harvest energy to light up an entire city where we reach power sensors, which are typically low power sensors, and they can run off less than a milliwatt power, often microwatts. So there's quite a lot of work on developing low power sensors as well.
00:13:22
Speaker
which require much lower amounts of energy which because of where technology stands at the moment is feasibly obtainable from the environment.
Smart Fabrics and Nanotechnology
00:13:32
Speaker
And the reason this is important is because typically these sensors would otherwise run off traditional power sources like say batteries but then we know the batteries need to be replaced or recharged which could be
00:13:43
Speaker
an issue, especially if you're deploying large numbers of sensors in these kind of wireless sensor networks, sort of internet of things kind of scenario. And so if these sensors are able to be self powered energy available in the environment, then then that
00:13:58
Speaker
would really be helpful, which is kind of what we're aiming for. And one of the areas where this harvested energy would be really suitable for is wearable technology and smart textiles. So how did you sort of consider textiles as a carrier for these nanomaterials? There's a lot of interest in wearable electronics, for healthcare monitoring or
00:14:21
Speaker
you know, personalized medicine and what would make a person want to wear these devices, I think is if they're comfortable, if they're convenient.
00:14:31
Speaker
having to wear like a battery pack may not be everyone's cup of tea. And so this is kind of where I got interested in this idea of, OK, well, you have all these fantastic wearable devices, all these fantastic wearable sensors. But could there be a way in which we could integrate this into textiles, into clothes, which everyone has to wear, whereby the clothes themselves can be a source of energy for these sensors?
00:14:56
Speaker
So that's kind of where the idea came about. And that's why we started looking into what we call them smart triboelectric yarns. So these are essentially fabrics which are designed to be able to harvest energy from body movement as the wearer is basically wearing these garments.
00:15:13
Speaker
and convert that into electricity that can be used to then power a sensor, which is probably also embedded within the garment itself. Fascinating. This is the stuff that gets me going. And you mentioned it was a yarn. How are these nanomaterials applied to the yarn, or are you sort of manipulating the yarn structures itself?
00:15:35
Speaker
The yarn itself has a couple of parts. The core of the yarn has to be conducting because we need to be able to collect the charge we are generating and, of course, have a way of connecting to some external circuit. So the core itself is a flexible conducting material. We typically use carbon nanotube fibers, which at the moment, these are commercially available.
00:16:01
Speaker
And what we do is we spin our, or electro-spin our materials onto them in a fibrous form. And we do this under very controlled conditions, one to get sort of the correct phase and crystallinity of the material, which again is important for energy harvesting performance. But also having this kind of fibrous structure means that we have a greater surface area over which you can have electric charge being developed once it's brought in contact with another material. And so the idea is to interweave
00:16:29
Speaker
pairs of these triboelectric yarns such that with normal body movement, there's friction between these yarns which can produce charge, which can then be collected by the inner conducting core. Oh, that's fascinating. So did you collaborate with some textile engineers at this point? Not yet, but I would be very interested to look into it. So this is what we've done as a collaboration with a very close colleague of mine in Poland. Her name is Ursula
00:16:55
Speaker
And her expertise is in the electrospinning of these fibers, and then we sort of made the devices based on these.
00:17:01
Speaker
But I should say, going back to one of your previous questions explaining nanotechnology to people, one of the challenges in this field is scalability, like how do you scale up? So at the moment, we can at most make maybe a meter of this yarn if we work really hard, but that's not going to produce a garment. So how do we scale these processes up? And that's kind of where I think having interactions with the textile industry, where of course you produce material to scale would be very beneficial.
00:17:30
Speaker
Well, I hope there's someone listening in here that's interested and is happy to contact you, Shoni. What are some of the hurdles that you faced when combining this technology with the fibers?
00:17:44
Speaker
So one of the biggest challenges, of course, is because you can think of this almost as a composite system. How do we ensure that everything sticks? So making sure that the adhesion of our fibers to the conducting core is robust. And also given that it's a friction driven technology. So how does wear and tear affect the performance of these materials over repeated cycles?
00:18:12
Speaker
Is the coating still intact, still robust? It's quite a bit of time trying to optimize that. And then the next question, of course, is if it's going to be a textile material, it needs to be washable, right? Because we want to be able to wash and reuse. So ensuring that once this goes into a washing machine, that it's still able to retain the same morphology, the same properties was also quite challenging. And we did some preliminary tests on that. And we were quite happy with the results. But of course, like I said,
00:18:40
Speaker
The next challenge is to try and see once we scale this up, when we actually make more complex woven structures, rather, would these material retain their integrity or would they still be robust enough? Power source and energy harvesting is some of the biggest challenges that the smart textile industry is still facing. And that battery pack is just, it drives everyone crazy. There's so much potential here. If this is a scalable solution, it has, you know, it can really transform the smart textile industry.
00:19:10
Speaker
I mean, I will say that, you know, and this is, this goes back to a question that you asked, how much energy is there actually? And is that enough to power whatever it is that you want to power? And, and it may be that for certain applications, this may not be the case. In which case you can think of energy harvesting as a way of prolonging the lifetime of a battery. So maybe you can get away by with using a smaller battery, for instance.
00:19:34
Speaker
because you have kind of this backup supply or this backup scores that can help prolong. So in cases where it cannot replace completely the use of a traditional power source, it can definitely help prolong the longevity of the source and also therefore of the device or the movement in use.
00:19:49
Speaker
So you're developing polymer nanomaterials, are they biopolymers? At the moment we use synthetic polymers but the sort of core technology that we're developing can be extended to biopolymers and it's a great point that you raise because of course one of the things we need to be mindful about with any kind of nanomaterial of course is
00:20:08
Speaker
the effect that it will have on the environment and of course on human health. And these are still open questions and people are looking into it. So by making the switch to biopolymers or at least polymers that we know can naturally degrade.
00:20:20
Speaker
are not harmful, that are biocompatible, that helps at least later rest some of these concerns. And again, that's something that the smart textile industry is looking for, is to find more sustainable solutions at the moment.
RTO Sense and Orthopedic Innovations
00:20:34
Speaker
That is an area that we're struggling with. Yeah, sustainability and of course, concerns for the environment and health. These have to go kind of hand in hand with
00:20:43
Speaker
whatever technology is being developed, because at the moment, there are studies looking into these things, but more has to be done if these technologies are to become viable and if they are to be rolled out. You are also the co-founder of RTO Sense, a force sensing technology for precision orthopedic surgery. It's not smart textiles, but I'd love to learn a bit more about what this technology is and how it's transforming hip surgery.
00:21:10
Speaker
Well, we're hoping that one day it will transform hip surgery. We've come up with a novel conformable force sensing technology that can aid orthopedic surgeons in positioning hip implants when people go in for like a hip replacement surgery. Because at the moment, the process of getting that implant into the correct position
00:21:29
Speaker
requires essentially, you know, surgeon who's very skilled, very experienced, who kind of, you know, they actually do this by feel to get the right. Wow. So trial and error kind of. Kind of. So we're trying to, you know, introduce some objectivity into this process so that instead of positioning these implants by feel, the surgeon can actually have sensors which give force readings, which would then enable the surgeon to correctly
00:21:54
Speaker
position this because if it isn't done correctly as people who've either had these surgeries or who know someone who's had these surgeries done, if these implants aren't in position properly they lead to lots of issues for patient outcomes in the sense that they could be left with pain or one leg longer than the other or you know in the worst case scenario they'll have to come back in for a revision surgery.
00:22:15
Speaker
But even those who don't need to come in for revision surgery often do suffer from discomfort or pain or whatever, because that implant hasn't been positioned, right?
Achievements and Mentoring
00:22:24
Speaker
So we're trying to enable the surgeon to be able to do these kind of high-precision orthopedic surgery based off force readings. And that's what we develop, sensors which can be used. And if you think of the head joint, it's a really tight joint, a tight bond of the joint. So there isn't actually much space to get anything in there. So that's where the innovation has come up with sensors that
00:22:43
Speaker
were thin enough which could conform to this rather arch-shaped joint, but also that were capable of measuring the really large forces actually that go through these weight-bearing joints at the same time. So that was the challenge. We spent on a company a couple of years ago and we're now
00:22:58
Speaker
sort of trying to get it to the stage where we can have first in human trials. Amazing. It's very exciting. It's a different world. It is. Yeah. Tell us about that. What's the difference between the life of an academic and the life of a startup founder? Well, in both cases, there's a lot of hustling I have. I think the language is very different. You know, the way we discuss things or we talk about things in academia is very different from when you're trying to commercialize a product and when you're
00:23:29
Speaker
talking to patent attorneys or investors or other soldiers. And I think that's something which I at least didn't initially feel like I was trained to do. And then I think a lot of those first
00:23:43
Speaker
few months and actually even currently I feel like I'm still learning that language but I'm beginning to see it and the goals are kind of different and I think it's a little bit more curiosity driven and that's one of the beauties of being an academia you can kind of you can decide to look at something just because you're really interested in it and you can take a deep dive and that's just that's the goal whereas of course when you're commercializing
00:24:06
Speaker
You have to be a lot more focused. It's very exciting to think that something that we work so hard on in the lab might actually make it out into the real world and might actually help.
00:24:16
Speaker
improve people's lives in some way. I'm sure it will absolutely transform hip surgery. I really believe that. In 2023, you received the Royal Society of Chemistry Peter Day Prize. It's given to those in their mid-career. When you look back on last 20 odd years, what's something that you're really proud of? Yeah, the thing that makes me most proud is actually the people that I have trained or that have gone through my lab and gone on
00:24:44
Speaker
great things that some of them have set up their own labs, their own research groups. When I see that, that makes me really proud. I mean, yes, we've done lots of great science and we have lots of really important scientific and technological accomplishments and achievements and all of that. But to me, the thing that makes me the most proud are really the people that I work with. And like I said, this really is what keeps me going.
00:25:07
Speaker
my research group, past, current, and of course, people who will come into it. But just seeing them sort of thrive, get trained, go out there, do their own thing, that's very, very rewarding, I have to say. That's the teacher in you, isn't it? What are maybe three key reflections you've had from the last 20 years of your career? The main one is if you have the
00:25:33
Speaker
passion for something and you have the opportunity to pursue that passion, then go for it. Just throw yourself at it, go for it. As long as it brings you joy and you feel like it's worth pursuing, do it. And there will be obstacles and challenges along the way, but if you truly believe in it and if it makes you happy, just do it. I think that's my first takeaway. The second reflection I would say is, and this is something that's taken me a while to
00:26:00
Speaker
to learn is to not say yes to everything, I think. And I feel looking back at my 20 years, there are things which I could have stepped back from, but I didn't at the time. And I think it's important for people to realize that it's okay sometimes to say no to things, I guess. And it all boils down to prioritizing. I always tell myself to prioritize what's really most important today. So let's start by focusing
00:26:30
Speaker
on that. And the third reflection I would say is to, you know, personally for me, one of the things that's really worked is having open dialogue with people who may or may not be from your discipline and to take that step out of your comfort zone and look at the bigger picture. So if, you know, thinking back at some of the most
00:26:51
Speaker
the successful things that have come out of my lab for my career, they've really been where, you know, not the traditional things. So even, you know, the fact that I'm a physicist, I'm in a material science department, it was in some ways a leap of faith, because I really didn't know what I was getting. It's just that, you know, taking those chances and talking to people really, really helps, particularly those who aren't necessarily from your field, but who come with their own kind of
00:27:16
Speaker
lived experiences or expertise or backgrounds.
Mentors and Career Challenges
00:27:20
Speaker
I just find that to be very, very stimulating and that's helped in so many ways to shape my career. Did you have any mentors or teachers or scientists that really inspired you to pursue your career in engineering, like a role model? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, my parents were certainly huge, huge role models and so much of what I do has been shaped by
00:27:43
Speaker
by the way, I was, I was brought up. So, and like I mentioned at the start, my mom even without more formal training, rather, let's say, advisor engineering, she inspired a lot of my interest in, in, in, in engineering. But also, yeah, growing up, I would say as school teachers, I was very privileged to have a very strong women role models as, as my science teachers. And I still remember them and they did inspire the love of science and engineering. My, my PhD advisor, he was
00:28:12
Speaker
is absolutely great. I mean, his name is Professor Arup Rai Chaudhry and he put in the love of experiments in me, I would say. And that's where it kind of all started and how to build an experimental setup, think of a problem and come up with solutions. I think that Arup has definitely played a huge role in that. What are some of the challenges that you have faced as a woman in engineering and how did you overcome these hurdles? It can be quite
00:28:42
Speaker
isolating when you are sort of the only woman in your cohort or in sort of navigating the struggles that women know in a
00:28:52
Speaker
a space that is still very much, you know, dominated by men. How I navigated around that, a lot of it was, you know, putting on my blinders and just focusing on what I really wanted to do and what I really wanted to achieve and then trying not to let anything else, you know, any of the, any, any negativity in, but it is very difficult, I will say. And there are obstacles along the way.
00:29:14
Speaker
I would say having a strong support system really helped. So my husband's also a physicist and we met while we were doing our PhDs and so he understood the challenges of academia and that was an enormous source of support and he was always there to encourage me.
00:29:34
Speaker
who's there for the highs and also for the lows and I think that makes a huge difference being surrounded by people who are really proppy up. Yeah, yeah. From your position of leadership today, in what ways are you able to facilitate a career path in engineering that is more open to women?
00:29:51
Speaker
So I do a lot of mentoring. I mentor a lot of younger women who are just starting off in academia and I try to give them as an honest a picture as possible because it is really hard. It is, and I wish someone had told this to me in more.
00:30:06
Speaker
in plain words it is really hard and there are lots of challenges and it can be incredibly rewarding but then it's also very easy to kind of get completely consumed by it and I think at some stage you know I try very much to remember this for myself but also to kind of tell women getting into this that you will face struggles and you have to be prepared for those but otherwise you know I do love
00:30:29
Speaker
speaking to the general public, making them more rigorous. So I do take part in things like science festivals or speaking to school children. They ask the best questions. They're the toughest audience, aren't they? Just to kind of also show them what a scientist, what an engineer can look like, because it's important to have
00:30:49
Speaker
role models to be able to see yourself in someone. So I think trying to enhance the visibility of women in science and engineering is important. That's something that I try to get involved in. But it's not just aimed at the women, it's also aimed at the men because it's not just up to women to change the culture. So I want to see, well, my hope is for a world where it doesn't matter who you are, what you are,
00:31:16
Speaker
If you feel like you want to do some good science, then you should have the opportunity to do so. I found that quite a few young girls that I've spoken to, they don't quite see the connection between what they're learning in class in science and the real world. They're like, oh, this is science, but the things I'm interested in in my real world, this is not really relevant.
00:31:41
Speaker
How do we kind of change that perception of science and inspire young people to engage and explore this fascinating subject?
Inspiration from Textiles
00:31:51
Speaker
That's a great question, Amelia. And I think this is kind of where, you know, having great teachers who can inspire the feeling is important. And again, thinking back to my school, science teachers, I mean, that's where it all
00:32:04
Speaker
started and also with my parents. So it's those early, you know, people who can influence your thoughts. That's where it really matters. And I see this now with my kids, you know, when they get excited about science, or there's a particular teacher that I can see that is really inspiring the way they think. I always make it a point to go up and say, thank you so much. Thank you so much. But as parents, and again, my husband Vijay and I, we're both scientists, I guess we can't help ourselves, but
00:32:31
Speaker
It becomes part of like dinner table conversation, part of the conversation and just showing them that, no, look what you're writing in school actually has as real life education. So, so more generally, I think there's a lot of great science communicators out there who do a great job.
00:32:47
Speaker
trying to bridge that divide. So exposing young people to that kind of content is immensely helpful. This is a textiles podcast. So one of the questions I'd really like to ask all my guests, is there some garments or a piece of fabric that holds a really personal memory for you or it sort of evokes memories? Yeah. I think a lot of my kids
00:33:12
Speaker
Like baby clothes, you know, the first ones they wore their first little hat or whatever those, those things I still have. And I cherish obviously very strong memories attached to that. But I actually have like, you know, certain items of clothing from when I was a kid or when I was a teenager and now.
00:33:29
Speaker
surprisingly, you know, I've actually preserved these, which I've handed over to my daughter, who's now that age. And so when I see her wearing some of these, that's like, wow. So yeah, so some of my childhood clothes, obviously, and also the baby clothes, I guess. That's so precious.
Recognition and Advice
00:33:49
Speaker
That's beautiful.
00:33:51
Speaker
In 2021, you were recognized as one of the top 50 influential women in engineering. And that's an incredible honor. I'm so happy. Congratulations on that. How did you feel about this when you first heard the news? Oh, I was honored and I was very excited to hear this news. Also because I don't come from a traditional engineering background, you know, like my undergraduate degree, my master's PhD, everything was in physics. So to.
00:34:17
Speaker
to have an award from an engineering body was something special. But it all sort of reinforced, for me, kind of the research direction that I
00:34:27
Speaker
chosen to take. And that is actually combining elements of device physics and materials engineering, come up with real world applications. So to be recognized for sort of the engineering aspect of that, that was really, really special. I know I've asked you a lot of questions, but was there a question that you wish I had asked and I didn't, there was anything that you wanted to share?
00:34:50
Speaker
I always say this to people, you know, when I speak, especially to early career people, just to remember that it can be harder than it looks because often when you only hear of people's successes, right? Like when they're playing, like you said, like when you have the award or the big grant or the big papers or whatnot, but actually for every one of those, I can tell you 10 things that didn't work.
Final Reflections and Call to Action
00:35:12
Speaker
And I think it's important for people to know that because quite often I think we present a vision of ourselves, which is the best.
00:35:19
Speaker
But just to know that there are real struggles behind them. And often people don't touch upon those because that's just human nature, I suppose. But I try to make it a point to tell people without something to cynical about.
00:35:33
Speaker
It's a lot of blood-sweating tears, but yeah, remember to prioritize. I love that takeaway. Thank you so much, Oni. It's such a brilliant conversation. I mean, I can just, you know, sadly the people listening in won't get to see a video, but I can really see your passion for science and engineering when you talk about it. You really do light up and there's so much energy that comes out of you when you speak about it. And I can see how passionate you are.
00:35:59
Speaker
not just for the work you do, but also empowering and enabling others around you to do the same. So wonderfully inspiring conversation, Chioni. Thank you so much for your time. Oh, thank you so much, Millie. Thank you so much. It was really enjoyable. Thank you.
00:36:15
Speaker
Such an inspiring journey and I learned so much from Johini. She really brought alive her passion for science and using science in our everyday lives to make a difference. It's made me want to dig deeper into nanotechnology and its potential in textiles.
00:36:29
Speaker
I know this episode was a little less about textiles and more about the world of science, but I believe it is so important for us to be curious, to learn, and be more engaged in fields that seem outside of our comfort zone of textiles and fashion. One of my hopes with this podcast
00:36:45
Speaker
is to really inspire more of us in the textile community to reach out and open doors and collaborate with scientists. Schoeni has a really interesting solution here for smart textiles, which addresses an important challenge that we face in the industry, which is powering up smart fabrics. But to really build this solution, we need people with textile expertise to also be part of this development and conversation.
00:37:07
Speaker
And I believe Shohini's work opens up an invitation for those in the textile industry to meet with her at the intersection, to collaborate and to take these solutions forward together. There's an explosion of creativity that happens when people from different industries come together. I would love to encourage you to reach out to someone from another field. I mean, if you're an engineer, reach out to an artist or a fashion designer. If you're a textile maker, reach out to a biochemist or a software engineer.
00:37:34
Speaker
Don't be afraid to start a dialogue and see where the conversations take you. You'll be surprised. I completely resonate with Shohini's advice on learning to say no. I have a feeling many of you can relate to this as well. We often feel like we have to take on everything and deliver at 150%. But looking back, I wish I had learned this simple lesson when I was much younger.
00:37:57
Speaker
Learning to prioritize and knowing what is really valuable to spend your time on is such an important skill and mindset to have. The fashion and textile industry is one that can be proud of the large numbers of women employed in our sector. I know there are several challenges to overcome for women to truly thrive in this industry, but young girls know that this is an industry where they can find many opportunities.
00:38:22
Speaker
Unlike this, Shohini works in a field where there were and still are far fewer women. There are many hurdles and blockers for a woman to pursue a career in science and engineering. So it feels extra special to have her with us today as we celebrate women who have persevered and followed their passion no matter what happened around them. They stayed the course.
00:38:45
Speaker
She didn't just survive in these places. She thrived, becoming an influential leader in her industry and one who's working hard to empower other women to follow in this field. I love that she's also finding opportunities to inspire young children to engage with science and make it meaningful for them.
00:39:05
Speaker
On that note, I'd like to wrap up our episode for today. Check out the show notes below for more information about Shoney's work and how he can reach her. Thank you so much for joining me. And if you have enjoyed this episode, please share the podcast with others who will find these episodes inspiring and helpful as well. It could be a friend, a colleague, a family member, spread the word. Remember to hit the follow and subscribe button on the podcast as well so you know when the next episode drops.
00:39:34
Speaker
I have a huge favour to ask of you. There is a short two-minute survey that will really help me improve these episodes and bring you more content that is valuable to you. The link to the survey is in the show notes. I would deeply appreciate it if you could take a couple of minutes to give me your view. I'm dying to hear from you, speak to me. That's all from me. Have a gorgeous day and thank you for joining me. This is your host, Millie Tharakin.