🌟 Thermodynamics Doesn’t Care About You with Jose L Ocana-Pujol: Episode 195 of Under the Microscope 🔬

What to Expect:

In this episode, Jose L Ocana-Pujol delves into his research on the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and their applications in various scientific and engineering fields. Jose shares his journey from studying engineering in Spain to conducting thermodynamics research at the University of Barcelona, and discusses the importance of understanding thermodynamic principles in both science and daily life.

About the Guest:

🌟 Key Takeaways from This Episode:

• Thermodynamics in Everyday Life: Understanding the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and their applications.
• Career Journey: From studying engineering in Spain to conducting thermodynamics research in Barcelona.
• Favourite Experiment: Investigating the entropy changes in different thermodynamic systems.

🔬 In This Episode, We Cover:

Jose’s Research :

Jose’s research focuses on understanding the fundamental principles of thermodynamics and their applications. By investigating how thermodynamic principles govern the behaviour of systems and processes, he aims to provide insights that can be applied in various scientific and engineering fields.

Jose’s Career Journey:

Jose’s academic journey began with a Bachelor’s in Engineering in Spain. He pursued his passion for thermodynamics, leading him to his current role as a PhD researcher at the University of Barcelona, where he focuses on understanding the fundamental principles of thermodynamics.

Jose’s Favourite Research Experiment:

Jose’s favorite experiment involves investigating the entropy changes in different thermodynamic systems. By studying how entropy evolves in various processes, he aims to better understand the principles that govern system behavior and energy transfer.

Life as a Scientist: Beyond the Lab

Jose values the collaborative nature of scientific research and enjoys engaging with the global scientific community. He is passionate about teaching and mentoring the next generation of scientists and values the opportunity to apply thermodynamic principles to real-world problems.

Jose’s 3 Wishes

1. Increased funding for research: Jose wishes for more financial support to advance innovative research projects.
2. Greater collaboration between researchers: He advocates for stronger partnerships to enhance knowledge sharing and collaborative efforts in research.
3. Improved public understanding of scientific research: Jose emphasizes the importance of public awareness and support for scientific advancements.

Jose’s Time on @RealSci_Nano:

Jose will be taking over the RealSci_Nano Twitter account to share his research on thermodynamics and its applications. Followers can expect to learn about the fundamental principles that govern the behavior of systems and processes, as well as insights into the practical applications of thermodynamics.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, I just finished recording a podcast with Jose, who is a PhD student at the university, uh, at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. And, uh, we talked about, um, uh, All kinds of things is super cool research, uh, with, uh, optical materials, um, at high temperatures, like synthesizing them. He’s a PhD student there.

So that’s what his PhD is all about. Uh, quite a lot to do with thermodynamics, uh, with optics and, uh, uh, scanning electron microscopy and focused ion beam, uh, sections and all of that. He also recently published a cool paper together with his team. So we also spoke a little bit about that. Um, And, uh, yeah, his journey from Barcelona to Catalonia to, uh, where he is now in Switzerland, in Zurich.

So, yeah, we talked about a lot of things and what his wishes are and what the followers can expect. So, yeah, quite a fun, uh, episode and can’t wait to share it with you all. Hi,[00:01:00] 

everyone. My name is Pranavati and I am your host of the Under the Microscope podcast. Video podcast. Um, and today we have with us Jose Okana Pujol, who is a PhD student at ETH Zurich, which is in Switzerland. ETH Zurich, um, basically one of the most, uh, reputed, uh, universities or institutions around the world.

So hi, Jose. Welcome to Under the Microscope. Um, how are you doing today? Well, I’m actually A bit sick, so not in the best state for this recording, but other than that, uh, everything is good. What happened? You sound a bit What happened? Yeah, uh, basically, uh, I, I swam into the beautiful Zurich lake, uh, recently because we had very good weather, but the cold was, uh, the water was very cold then.

Somehow thermodynamics, uh, didn’t, uh, take a lot of care of me and my body didn’t like the temperature shock, I [00:02:00] think. So is it, is it safe to say that the thermodynamics didn’t give a shit about you? That’s very good to say, but I guess you could also say that I didn’t give a shit about thermodynamics because I should have known that before jumping into the water.

True, true, true. And thermodynamics won, so. Yeah, and thermodynamics, it always wins. Um, OK, that, uh, I hope you feel better soon, and I hope you have learned your lesson in thermodynamics. Wow, there are so many jokes I can do about this, uh, but let’s get started with, uh, getting to know you and your science.

Yes. Um, so please explain your research to us in super simple words, please. Assume I’m 12 years old and yeah, all I know is thermodynamics gave you a cold. Tim? Yeah, so I’m, I’m doing a PhD here, um, broadly in optical metamaterials. Metamaterials are just some materials that instead of, so they base their, uh, properties instead of in the chemistry.

So typically when we describe a material, and I mean the material science [00:03:00] department, so I should know that you say like, okay, so this is, uh. Because it’s still this is transparent because it’s glass. So it goes back to what kind of atoms, what kind of chemistry do we have there? In metamaterials is not like this.

In metamaterials, the properties are defined by the geometry that these materials have in a very specific way. Yes. So we, so the idea is a bit that by the geometry, by what kind of shapes and patterns you have from them. You can have, you can change the properties of the material to a point where the properties are abnormal or not what one typically finds in nature.

Really? So when you say geometry, do you mean the crystal structure? It can be the crystal structure, but it can also be bigger things. So I, I have this example over here, just by chance, um, Oh, wow. So just a disclaimer, this is not mine. This was a present that my. But my, uh, office colleague during my master’s thesis gave to me, he was working on mechanical metamaterials and working in optical metamaterials, but I think it symbolizes pretty well what happens, you know, [00:04:00] like typically when you press a material in one direction, it will expand in the other direction, right?

Here you have a kind of material that when you press it in one direction, Right. It also compresses in the other direction, right? Oh, that’s what you mean by geometry. Exactly. And this is just because of how specifically these holes are made. I could not reproduce this. This is not my field. But basically I do the same with optical properties.

So I like to design materials that, I mean, the simplest example with optical properties is, you know that typically when you put Something like a straw or a pencil in a glass of water. Yeah, it looks like the pencil is broken. And yeah, right? This is because of refraction and so on. This is because of the refractive index.

Well, there are examples in optical metamaterials, and actually I think to some extent that’s how the field got started. Sorry, uh, science historians. Um, where you can have negative refraction, and if anyone hears Google’s negative refraction water, you will find like this picture of the [00:05:00] pen going into a glass.

And then it coming in the opposite direction, or it looking like it comes in the opposite direction, and that’s how it will look if it had negative refraction. So that’s the idea. And this is just because of how we design the materials. We make things very, very small, smaller than the wavelength in the case of the optics, or smaller than the deformation in the case of mechanics.

And this changes the properties of the materials. Oh, wow. That’s the material. Well, plainly put. Oh, my God. That is so cool. That is so cool. And for everyone listening to the podcast and not watching the video, please head over to the Science Talk YouTube channel and find this episode because Jose just showed us some science magic, uh, with the, with this, uh, mechanic.

Mechanical metamaterial gift that he received from someone and oh my God, that’s so cool. From Giorgio, that’s a mention him, I haven’t seen him, you know what. Sorry, what’s his name again? Giorgio. Giorgio. Yeah. Alrighty, where is Giorgio now? To be honest, I have no clue, probably in the Netherlands, that’s where it is.

But we can’t speak about that. European continent. Yes. All right. That sounds, oh my god, that sounds so cool. Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Okay, okay, so you basically, uh, okay, you work on materials. to make sure that they are functioning well, uh, at like high temperatures, like [00:06:00] 1, 500 or so. And you do that by changing the geometry or, well, there are like two things there, right?

Like, so yes, the basic, the basic idea of metamaterials is let’s Take a lot of care of the geometry. Let’s design materials with a very specific geometry, right? So that they can have the properties that we’re looking for. Instead of changing the material and going to a different chemistry, we’re just changing the geometry.

That’s the basic idea, right? Um, in my subgroup, I’d say. So my supervisor is specifically focuses on, uh, what we could call scalable metamaterials. So because, okay, here in the case of this mechanical materials, these holes are pretty big, but another Hmm. Another foundational thing of meta material physically is that this geometry that we engineer needs to be smaller That’s the actuation that we have, which means that in the case of light light waves can be classified by the wavelength.

So what’s the distance between the different peaks in visible light? We are talking, you know, about 500 to 800 nanometers, more or less. [00:07:00] If you want to have a metamaterial that works with visible light, you need your feature size. your geometry to be at least let’s say five times smaller than the wavelengths.

So then we are talking about nanoscience, right? Um, what this led to is that the first metamaterials that were designed, they were designed with this top down approach, which meant that they were very difficult to fabricate, um, very time consuming and so on. And basically my supervisor and also the other PhD students, we broadly focus on designing metamaterials that can be fabricated in minutes, not in days.

Um, in a scalable, uh, in a scalable manner, that’s the first thing, right? And that is specifically, I, I do that with something called the magnetron spattering, which is a technique that allows you to stack materials. And I like, I ended up looking at how these metamaterials can be used in applications in which thermal stability is required.

So there are, why do I mean by that? applications in which you are at high [00:08:00] temperatures, meaning from hundreds to thousands of degrees Celsius. There are a lot of proposed applications that require to work on that. So one of them is hyperthermia. This is more for the bio people, but it’s this idea that you can have something, put it in your body, direct it directly to the part that you need to eliminate, and then actuate it, it will hit that pellet and kill those cells.

Right. Of course, This thing that you put in your body needs to be able to withstand those temperatures. Otherwise it will not get so hot, right? That’s one example. The other example, and that’s something that I’m working more closely on is thermophotovoltaics, for instance. This is the idea that instead of using the light directly coming from the sun to generate electricity, we can use The light that comes from objects that are very hot to generate electricity.

So there is this thing called the blackbody radiation. This is what dictates in physics that, you know, when you heat something up, first it goes orange, then it goes white and so on. It’s recycling this heat that can come also from [00:09:00] the sun or can come from recycling industrial applications or whatever, to generate electricity.

Right. And these materials that you’re going to use there need to be able to withstand temperatures between 1, And there it would be very useful if we could use some metamaterials because they interact with light in awesome ways, but you need to be able to design something that will withstand these temperatures, right?

And also function well, right? Because things tend to degrade at very high temperatures, right? So that’s your PhD work, basically finding materials or create synthesizing materials, always. For scalable production of these materials, which will be functioning and doing the job at high temperatures 1000 to 2000, depending on the application.

That’s that’s a good summer. Yes. Okay. That sounds really cool. So, uh, was it, how did you end up working on this cool project in, in Switzerland? I tell us about your science journey so far by chance. So, um, so my science journey, I guess, started, um, back home. Um, I was, uh, I’m a Spanish citizen. Okay. Uh, I’m from [00:10:00] Catalonia and one day.

But I need I only know wow, but that’s a that’s pretty impressive. Yeah, my my very good friend is from Catalonia so. Yeah, but yeah, but I need, but sorry, nevermind. That was impressive. I typically don’t meet the international people who know some words in Catalan, so thanks for that. Um, yeah, so basically it started there.

I did my bachelor there, um, in nanoscience. That was the name of the bachelor. I was very excited about it because I think I was The second promotion that, uh, studied the degree in nanoscience back in Spain, and it was the only place in Spain where you could study it, uh, the Autonomous University of Barcelona, where it was, so it meant that, you know, we had people from all over Spain, there was this new degree, it was kind of cool.

Uh, however, I became a bit, um, deceived by the end of it, uh, with the whole idea, and, uh, I decided that I did not like the fact that [00:11:00] Quite ironically, I decided that I did not like the fact that my degree was so research oriented. It’s something that you could say, yeah, what did you expect studying something so new, but and then I decided to go to the Netherlands, Amsterdam, to do a master that would take me out of research, basically.

So it was a master, it was a master in physics, but it was called physics Science for Energy and Sustainability. And it had like this 30 credits in which you could take environmental chemistry management courses. Like the idea was like to look at the broad idea of behind like energy and sustainability.

Right. Okay. And as a master, it was very fun. Um, I met great people. I learned a lot. I actually, uh, managed to get a student job once a week doing that, doing energy analysis. But, uh, in order to get your master in physics, you actually need to do a master thesis in physics. I want your thesis. So then there was this year in which I was doing these two things.

I was working part time. Um, and at the same time I was researching, uh, in a TAML. Uh, by the way, I think you already had People being interviewed from there. I know I’m off. [00:12:00] Yeah, you have the site in Europe. People from there via Marjorie and we have said yeah, I don’t know. Marjorie, uh, I guess that he or she joined a bit later than I left, but the site was already there.

And actually, I came to know the Twitter account real scientist nano because a long time ago, I don’t remember exactly when a girl called Loretta. Uh, took it over, uh, and I knew her from above, uh, back then. So anyhow, I was lucky enough to end up on this institute, which was a great place to do research.

Correct. And I ended up liking it so much, while at the same time I didn’t like my job so much. Uh, the thing that was paying me, that’s how I decided to go back into research. Um, and that happened. Well, yeah, then there was a very, uh, coincidental set of steps, which ended up with me getting an email. So I applied for a position here at ETH.

I did not get it because it is a prestigious university. Right. And just by some kind of cosmic chance, my [00:13:00] master supervisor, Visited my current group without knowing, uh, anything about that. And my current supervisor was like, Oh, you’re Esther. Oh yeah. I have you here in the reference list for this, uh, Jose Ocaña.

Do you know him? And then from what I understood, she somehow realized that she was. She hadn’t responded to the email and yeah, that gave me a kickstart in the application. I guess and then they invited me to come over and they ended up selecting me. That is so cool. That yeah, so it was really a coincidence.

Um, I’m very grateful. Wow, that’s that’s quite a journey you’ve had. Wow, what unconventional sort of a yeah to make it even worse like I I only found out about this in a karaoke because I was still like hanging out with the PhDs at the place where a Tamil and they told me yeah I was like I’m so happy I have an interview in Zurich and they were like yeah of course you’re going to get it like as their worker I was like what what are you telling me I couldn’t get it so yeah it was a bit of a exotic combination yeah that’s great that is that is really really cool awesome so there are There are quite a lot of things you have done.

You have been in quite a lot of labs. Um, and my next question might be a bit difficult, but I’m still going to ask it. Uh, do you have, uh, a research project out of all the different kinds of experiments and [00:14:00] research, research, uh, Work that you have done so far, do you have one research experiment that you’re super proud of?

And, uh, if you do, I hope you do, uh, could you explain it to us in simple words in the section we call in other words. Yes, um, well, I’m going to choose the latest publication that got published because that’s the thing you are the most proud, right? It’s I’m still in the rush. I mean, it got published. It got accepted a while ago, but it got published three days ago from the one we’re recording this podcast.

So I’m allowed. I’m allowed to choose it, I guess. Congratulations. Yes, of course you’re allowed. Just because of that, um, yeah, well, that’s the idea there. Um, it’s. Closely related to what we were talking about in this case. We were examining silver silicon. Um So you have silver and silicon stacked over each other With sizes varying from 15 to 28 nanometers if I recall correctly So we have five bilayers so we actually also played with that at some point in the paper But uh, we have five and three bilayers so ten and six layers in total With [00:15:00] a repetition unit varying from 30 to 40 nanometers.

So, yes. Okay. All righty. So, very thick. Truly nano. For nano scale, very thick. Overall, it’s very thick, right? But then we had silver layers of indeed of 12 nanometers. They did not get to the paper, but we also synthesized 4 nanometers thick silver. Uh, layers using this. And yeah, we designed them as a metamaterial, um, as a metamaterial to be a super absorber that Near near perfect absorption, meaning that it less than 1 percent of the light that goes in gets reflected or transmitted.

We we descend them for that. And well, first of all, optically, you know, like As we’re saying, in my lab, we try to do things that are scalable, right? Um, these multi layers, I will be sputtering them in about one hour, while typically these metamaterials take days to be, uh, fabricated. However, there’s a problem coming with this, and it’s that the interface between the [00:16:00] two layers is not gonna be super smooth if you do it so quickly.

But actually, we found out, it’s something that we had already been interested, uh, researched in literature, But we confirmed that actually this disorder that happened of it not being super smooth, it’s actually beneficial for the application. So it actually improves the absorptivity of the whole thing.

Um, so disorder is not necessarily bad. Okay. Like that’s the first thing and it’s actually good. And then we just decided like to study how, what was the maximum temperature at which this behavior would be found. And then what we found was actually very surprising because there was a temperature range.

At which the optical properties were still the same, but if you actually did a FIP cross section, so FIP is a focus ion beam, it means we send ions like to cut it, and then you actually look at this It’s like cutting a cake and fibrous like the knife. Exactly, it’s exactly that. [00:17:00] You cut the cake. And if you look at the layer structure in the cake, it turns out that the lower layers of the cake were completely degraded.

So we had five layers at the beginning, right? And now five bi layers at the beginning, and now we only have three because the, uh, The further down, uh, four layers were completely intermixed. But one would never say that looking at the optical properties, because once it’s the optical properties and they are the same and we run a lot of tests about that and that’s, and that is part of the question.

First of all, why is the degradation starting down? Because if you look at literature, typically it’s assumed to be isotropic at the top, yeah. At the top or somewhere or quite regular. Through the section, right? And secondly, how can it be that the degradation doesn’t impact actually the optical properties?

Um, and this is, uh, what we researched. We tried to find, uh, using also simulations. And then that’s the thing I’m the proudest about. Uh, we did tomographies. So it means, imagine, we’re taking a picture of the SEM scan. Uh, we’re just taking a picture of the [00:18:00] cake. You’re cutting a bit more. And we’re taking a picture like to see whether this is something that just happened at this depth, or if it’s actually, and this allowed us to get tomographies that then we could simulate them so we could do 3D simulations, and this way we found out that this was driven, actually, by stress.

So this was completely being driven by stress and by the change in the thermal expansion coefficient. Between the materials, which is something that typically gets overlooked in multi layer theory. So in multi layer theory, they always focus, um, on surface area minimization. So on how much of each layer is in contact with the other one.

And we actually compare both contributions. I need to remember that. And actually, what we did, like, to prove it, finally, was Okay, this structure started with silver and then it had silicon, silver, silicon, silver, silicon. What happens if we change the architecture? If we have silicon on the bottom, and then we found out that actually you can tailor where the, you can easily tailor where the instability starts.

So when we change the order, the thing starts degrading on the [00:19:00] top. Um, So, and we could just find about that because I, we got a lot of pieces of cake and we looked at them and it was a, and it was a structure that at the same time had an interest from the optical perspective because it was a near perfect absorptions.

And yeah, that’s the paper and I’m pretty proud about it. Oh my God. Oh my God. That is so cool. Where is the paper published and congratulations. It’s on advanced optical materials. Advanced optical materials. Oh, congratulations. I hope you will talk about this paper and show us the cake pictures and everything.

I will, I will. That’s uh, that’s part of the plan. Oh, that is so cool. I can understand why you chose this. This one you’re allowed to have. Like, exactly, yeah. And I’m about to talk about it, you know. Absolutely, absolutely. So, um, Jose, I hope your research experience has been wonderful so far and will continue to be wonderful in the future as well.

Um, however, if you had three wishes to improve your research experience, What would you ask for three wishes? Not promising anything here, but three wishes.

Hi yeah, you know, like I was thinking about that um, and I [00:20:00] also saw that this analysis that you did where everyone is complaining about funding and equipment. It’s not that pretty much right? Stop complaining OK.

Those are the top. Those are the top wishes. Um, also the wish about going to Mars. So, um, let’s keep all of that in mind. Okay, so I’m gone. No, no, no, no, no, no. Um, ETH is a great institution, and I’m kept away from money decisions. So maybe my supervisor decisions would be different, but I have nothing to complain about instruments, not about funding.

So that makes it more difficult, like, uh, to come up with something. So I will come up with something more, uh, a bit more original. Um, I wish that there was a bit more of a specialization in science. What do you mean? So what I mean is, right now, the,

right now you get promoted to be a professor based on your research, and then suddenly you are a manager and an educator. I’m not [00:21:00] very sure that is right. Also, You see technicians being forced to publish. Um, so it seems, it seems to me that we are going to the old career man, someone who you need to be able to read research, but also like to be an experimental, well, an experimental, like to manage the machines yourself.

Um, but also you need to be good at outreach, but also you need to be a good educator, but also suddenly you need to be a good manager. And I’m not sure that’s the ideal. incentives came for, and that’s not the best way to organize research. Yeah, so better like changing or tweaking the research structure from the organizational perspective and expectations perspective so that, uh, the researchers are not, uh, spreading through it thin because, uh, They are needed by the master students, the bachelor students, their technicians, by the machines, by the, uh, publishers, by the funding agencies, by the university, by The fact that you are a good researcher and that you have good results does not mean that [00:22:00] you are good at I think, for example, at writing articles, the way, because there’s also like a very specific kind of language that you have to use and so on, at dealing with the tutorial world, for example.

Um, so yeah, that’s just something that maybe I, I you’d wish that I’m not like that. I also have like multiple interests, but I know a lot of people who are. They like one thing about science and the fact that they need to do all the other things takes them away. Oh, and I, I think we want those people with us.

That, yeah, that’s, that’s actually an interesting one. So, okay, um, what else? You have two more wishes. You can ask for a coffee machine also. I don’t know why I’m giving you ideas. We have a great coffee machine. We bought it last March. I’m sorry. So, no, but I’ll tell you something. When, and this is a bit unrelated, when I moved here to ETH, the thing I missed the most about Tamul was their coffee machine.

They have a great coffee machine at the entrance of the building, where everyone meets to have great coffee, and here at ETH it feels like everyone is more like in their room, like it’s a bit more. And, yeah, maybe that would be my second one. Like, in general, greater inclusivity in science, [00:23:00] I guess. Yeah, and I mean, I’m I’m lucky or I’m privileged I’m a white European guy, but I mean this first week this same week we had the case of a postdoc that could not join us because of these issues like this.

And I know many. I also have a master’s student coming from Colombia soon who wants to work with us and he’s been having this kind of problems for quite a while. And yeah, OK, so more inclusivity, Uh, third wish. Do you have a third one? It feels like you are super like taken care of by ETS Zurich. I should, I should really like come to you.

It sounds like a great place. I’m definitely very lucky, uh, very lucky to be here. Yeah, the third wish, let’s say, yeah, the

some kind of change in the editorial world. Wow, what kind of change? A change in which the articles that are published more closely reflect the work that people have done. I think that we are losing a lot of time and [00:24:00] taxpayer money, if you want, just because we only publish the things that work out. And there are also like, personally, I have a lot of small projects that were there and there, but that we did not publish because It’s too small and we are, we, everyone is aiming for this 10 pages article, you know, because that’s what is better for your career and so on.

And maybe having the possibility to publish smaller but also bigger things and that they come the same would mean that I could disseminate my knowledge and people will not have to try this, uh, on their own. Right. Hmm. Yeah. The, uh, a Journal of Failed Experiments or something like that. Yeah. This and the fact, you know.

The fact that, uh, more people could read them. I’m also, again, very taken care of. So here in, at ETH, you’re very encouraged to publish Open Access. But, uh, that’s not the case everywhere. So, yeah, these kind of things. A critical reflection of the editorial model and, uh, what it brings. Yeah, that makes sense.

I think just beginning of this week or last week, there was a lot of, I don’t know if you followed that on Twitter, there was a lot of discussion with, uh, [00:25:00] Frontiers, um, because Frontiers is open access. Yeah, I don’t, I didn’t follow the conclusion. I’ll tell you after we stop recording. Yeah. Oh my god, it’s so controversial.

It’s gonna be interesting because I actually know people who work at Frontiers. Uh, they are, they are based in Lausanne here in Switzerland. Oh right, Frontiers is in Switzerland. Yeah, duh, of course, yeah. I don’t know if they are based there but, At least they have a very big office. I think, I think frontiers is based like headquarters is in Switzerland.

I think I remember this. Uh, but yeah, I’ll tell you that, uh, after we stop recording, I want to see any good thing controversial on record. Um, all righty. Um, I, I think it’s my feeling from talking to you for about an hour now, um, that you really like the research part of being a scientist. Um, What else do you like about being a scientist other than using the fancy instruments and drinking the awesome coffee?

Coffee is definitely one thing. Um,

so this goes a bit against what I said before about inclusivity. No, I guess it doesn’t go against. It’s just that I wish we had done more. But definitely one of the things that I like is The variety of very interesting people that I interact with on a daily basis. And actually, that was one of the [00:26:00] main reasons why I decided to pursue a PhD and not stay in the private world.

Like, because I was comparing at the time, maybe it’s a bit unfair, but I was comparing at the time the lunch breaks that we had in the company at the place where I was doing my PhD. The end. Talking with all those people during my master’s thesis was so fun during lunch. They had all these ideas.

Everyone came from somewhere different while in the company, it was more like yeah, buying a house, you know, like more of a, maybe a bit more boring stuff. Uh, I would say, um, and I think not so much the science, but not only science. I mean, we talk about a lot of things also here, like, uh, doing. And it’s because there’s people with very different brains somehow working on it.

And it’s just great, uh, all the nice people that I met, uh, with different backgrounds and so on. Ah, that is so cool. That is so cool. Okay. This has been wonderful. So Jose, before I let you go, um, what can the followers of the Real Scientist Nano, uh, Twitter account expect in the week that you are tweeting from the account?

Tell us. So I will, I will try [00:27:00] to, um, Well, first I will introduce a bit my lab, BTH, Zurich, and so on, explain why. The coffee machine. The coffee machine. I promise here that there will be a video of, actually now that we de escalated it, uh, we could even phone things there. Uh, yeah, so coffee machine is gonna be there.

Then. God, I am so happy for you. Sorry, God. I’ll tell you something. It took us three years of fighting, uh, to get it. So it’s, it’s possible. Just keep asking for it. Okay. Just, just keep like pestering, pestering, and it will happen eventually. The authorities will give in and get you an amazing coffee machine with a foamer.

And, um, hopefully because scientists work on caffeine. I mean, it should be, uh, right. Yeah, and then I will also talk about my research as well. Uh, just by coincidence, the week that I’m curating, uh, there are two things happening. Um, first of all, I have some practicum duties, so some, I’m getting some practica, so I will show also a bit about what we teach, and I will bring like a couple of, uh, Experiments to show on the Twitter account and then actually on Friday I have a career [00:28:00] day coming in so I need to structure with my brain and my mind about how to do it.

But there will also be some talk about that, about career opportunities during the PhD and what it gives you and so on. Oh, that sounds so cool. Is it like an open doors day at UTR? It’s a TTH, um, it’s called Campus Interview. So basically, uh, I sent in because my supervisor, uh, encouraged me to start looking at what I want to do after the PhD.

And basically, they are going to match me automatically with eight companies. Um, and I’m going to have a half an hour discussion with each of them. So I’m very curious to know, uh, I’m very curious to know what they, because very few of these companies are actually into science. No, okay. They all know the science, but not into the kind of science that I do.

So. I’m very curious to know how these human resources, people who don’t really know what I’m doing, um, how they’re gonna interact with me, um, I’m just very curious, the experience that I didn’t have and not once. So it’s gonna be statistically representative because it’s gonna be [00:29:00] eight of them. Um, so yeah, I will talk a bit about the experience.

That is, that is so cool. That is so cool. Oh my God. I’m looking forward to your time on Ari Scientist Nano and the cake Pictures. Well, not the cake, but. The film pictures, uh, the 3D images and the coffee machine with the former, um, and, uh, the practical, everything, everything. Yes. Everything. So thank you very much, Jose.

Looking forward to having you on Real Scientists Nano and thank you. very much, Pranati, for this interview. It was a lot of fun. It was my pleasure.

Thank you for listening. This is Pranati, host of Under the Microscope. To know more about us, visit our website, thesciencedoc. com and follow us on Twitter at realsci underscore nano.

Podcast title: Thermodynamics does not Care about You!

Jose is a PhD student at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Curation week Oct 31 – Nov 6, 2022

Keep up with Jose on social media