What to Expect:
In this episode, we delve into Antonija Grubisic-Cabo’s innovative research on 2D materials and topological insulators. Antonija shares her journey from Croatia to various research institutions across Europe and discusses her groundbreaking KISS method.
About the Guest:
Antonija Grubisic-Cabo
Antonija Grubisic-Cabo is a researcher specializing in 2D materials and topological insulators. Her academic journey has taken her from Croatia to Denmark, Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Antonija’s current research focuses on innovative methods to study material properties using laser light.
![](https://thesciencetalk.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Antonija.png)
🌟 Key Takeaways from This Episode:
- Advancing Material Science: Antonija’s research focuses on 2D materials and topological insulators, using laser light to study their properties and create new phases with enhanced functionality.
- Career Journey: Antonija’s academic journey includes significant stints in Croatia, Denmark, Australia, Sweden, and the Netherlands, highlighting her diverse experience and expertise.
- Favourite Experiment: Antonija’s favourite experiment is the KISS method, which involves creating 2D materials in an ultra-high vacuum using gold as a substrate, resulting in larger flakes and better surface quality.
🔬 In This Episode, We Cover:
Antonija’s Research :
Antonija works on the properties of 2D materials and topological insulators when exposed to laser light, creating new phases and enhancing functionality. Her research aims to advance material science by understanding these interactions at the quantum level.
Antonija’s Career Journey:
Antonija’s journey includes moving from Croatia to Denmark for her PhD, then to Australia for her postdoc, followed by research positions in Sweden and the Netherlands. Her diverse experiences have enriched her research perspectives and expertise.
Antonija’s Favourite Research Experiment :
Antonija’s favorite experiment involves the KISS method for creating 2D materials in an ultra-high vacuum using gold as a substrate. This method results in larger flakes and better surface quality, making it a significant advancement in the field of material science.
Life as a Scientist- Beyond the Lab :
Antonija balances her research with teaching and maintaining connections with the global scientific community. She values the collaborative and inclusive nature of scientific research.
Antonija’s 3 Wishes
- More time for research: Antonija wishes for more dedicated time to focus on her research without the constraints of administrative tasks.
- Better open science with fewer obstacles: She advocates for a more transparent and accessible scientific community with fewer barriers to sharing knowledge.
- Greater understanding of the multifaceted role of scientists: Antonija emphasizes the importance of recognizing the diverse roles and responsibilities of scientists beyond just research.
Antonija’s Time on @RealSci_Nano :
Antonija will be tweeting about her research, organizing a conference on quantum magnetic materials, teaching, and the KISS project. Follow her for an inside look into the exciting world of 2D materials and topological insulators.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi everyone, my name is Pranavi. I’m your host of Under the Microscope podcast or vodcast if you are watching on YouTube. And today we have with us a veteran of Under the Microscope, Antonia Grubich Chabo. Antonia is a tenure track assistant professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the last time we spoke with Antonia, she was post doc, I think, at The KTH in Sweden, which is another renowned university.
But yeah, well, welcome Antonia. It’s so lovely to have you again on under the microscope. How are you? I’m good. And, thanks for having me again. Last time we spoke you were in Sweden and now you are in the Netherlands. What, what, what made you change? Of course, there is a part of, you know, you’re offered an offer.
You cannot refuse, which in this case was a tenure [00:01:00] track position. So last time we spoke, I was in Sweden and Stockholm, very lovely place, although not too much sightseeing during COVID because my whole postdoc in Sweden was actually during COVID. But then I was offered a tenure track position here in the Netherlands.
It’s a very nice place with nice colleagues and really on a topic I wanted to work on. So, obviously I said yes. That makes sense, totally. Tenure track. Congratulations! Dude, this is a big thing! This is a big, big thing. Congratulations! Antonia, what kind of research are you doing nowadays? so it’s sort of Continuation and also a combination of things i’ve been doing during my phd and postdoc time So I still work on 2d materials, which is what we Spoke about some two years ago, but now I also moved some working with other kinds of materials as we call topological insulator, very fancy materials.
And I’m mostly looking into their properties out of equilibrium. So I still study their electronic [00:02:00] properties. So if you think of when we talk about electronic materials, we say we have insulators, metal semiconductors, that stuff I study, but now I also study these properties when we poke them with laser lights and just.
Forced material to be completely different. And you also mentioned the topological insulators. So like one or two weeks on, or just before your week on real time, this nano, we have a researcher, a theoretical physicist who is also working on topological insulators. And his name is Antonio.
And he explained the topological insulators to me. And also to our followers in such simple. I’ve never understood topological insulators, at such depth. He’s a theoretical person. I can put you two in touch because he’s doing like theoretical work. He’s also based in the Netherlands. Antonio based in Netherlands.
So what do you do now? Basically, you’re still working with 2d materials and [00:03:00] you’re shooting laser lights at laser and the materials. Yeah. So, you can use very strong lights to actually change properties of materials. So in some cases you can turn, let’s say semiconductor to a metal just by exciting carriers.
But in other cases, if you hit the wavelength really well, you can even just, I don’t know if it’s going to turn material into a completely different face. So maybe something that is meta stable. The phase exists, but it’s not the one that you would expect at room temperature and in daily conditions.
But we can also look at creating completely new phases, but on super fast scales, we’re talking things like femtoseconds. So like 10 to the minus 15 seconds, you can create a phase that doesn’t really exist in the material in regular conditions. And it can be completely different.
But why do you do that? Why do we need like, like, what, why? I mean, other than the fun part of it, I’m sure there is a reason behind it. Why do [00:04:00] you do this? So I always like to say that I am here for the fun part. So I’m really interested in new physics. One thing is that you can actually find phases that don’t exist in reality.
if we are talking, let’s say, about topological materials, topological insulators are just one kind of. These very special materials and even create change like topological phases. So I have a topological material of type one, let’s say I shoot a laser light and I turn it to type two.
Or if you think of your regular topological insulator, you could try and use laser light to open and close what we call a gap. So you could try and use it for a topological transistor, but you use very fast light for switching and that you can also have very, very fast devices.
Very fast devices. That means my computer and my phone can get faster, right? Can get faster, but the reason why we’re super interested in [00:05:00] topological materials is that your phone and computer wouldn’t overheat. That would be awesome.
Yes, then that will also improve the battery life, right? Yes Yeah, I mean a lot of a lot of batteries basically drains Our switches the transistors are not so efficient. So we do lose fair amount of energy Which is just heat if you don’t lose if you use less energy to even do switching by default Your battery life is better because you know, you don’t drain it as much Oh, that sounds so cool.
So before we move on, I have to ask you this, which is your favorite material? Today, I’m still a big fan of graphene. It’s like something I grew up with, but let’s say tungsten disulfide. Tungsten disulfide is lovely. You can do many fun things with it. Okay. What does tungsten disulfide have that graphene doesn’t have?
[00:06:00] So we’re still talking about 2D materials. Tungsten disulfide has what we call a band gap. So that’s the part that you would use for switching. It’s a semiconductor, but you can also use it for this really, really cool thing called spin and valley tronics. So these materials are hexagonal and you can imagine that like in corners of hexagon, you have.
Like every second corner is the same. So like neighbors are completely different and each of these neighbors has opposite spin. So if I use lights of particular helicity, so circular left and rights, I can really select one value. One of these points with, I can say, Oh, I want to see what happens with spin up.
I changed the direction of my life and I say, Oh, what happens to spin down? And that’s quite neat and not really easy to do in graphene. That is so cool, of course, because with graphene, each hexagon has the carbon atom, so they have the same spin. Yes, in case of graphene, you always get like all of these corners, they all look the same, [00:07:00] but it’s so much fun to see like, oh, I just use lights and out of a sudden I have electrons would just like spin up and electrons would spin down or just chilling It’s like a really cool, optical selection rule, but it’s very much fun when it comes to looking to physics.
And again, you can use it like pitch can be. Well, we can use this for new kinds of, let’s say, data storage. If you select like one particular spin or looking into computation, we’ve just Spin because against spins also dissipate less. So you would, your devices would eat less. Yes.
Yeah, of course. Oh, That is so cool. I want to visit your lab and see this happen. I mean, witness this happen. Let’s talk about this when we stop recording. that would be awesome. so now Antonio, the last time you spoke, you were in Sweden and I remember you started your science journey in Croatia, really a traveling scientist.
You are, I have to say, please tell us how does [00:08:00] one become a tenure track professor? In the Netherlands. How tell me about your journey. So I will say what a lot of people also say that you do have to be lucky. in this case, I’m hired on something that is called a sector plan position, which basically means that the Dutch government decided that they have particular scientific fields of interest that they want to strengthen in the country.
And my field is actually one of them, which is advanced materials. Also just things out of equilibrium done to advanced materials. You also have to make, let’s say some strategic choices. in this case, you do have to have a profile that fits. I started my master’s in a completely different field. So I worked on something called quasi zero dimensional magnets.
Which is like, we’re going now even lower than 2d, basically materials where you have magnetic order, but in just isolated locations. So they still create a pattern, but it’s just isolated. Let’s [00:09:00] say dots. And that’s something I really, really enjoyed. when it came to PhD, there were no positions available in Croatia at that time.
And I was recommended this very, very cool group in Denmark. And I was put in contact with a professor. He’s called Philip Hoffman. He’s great. He actually authored a few books on solid state physics and surface science. So some of our listeners or viewers might have used this book. But, when I met him and his group, I really liked the atmosphere of the place.
I quite liked, the equipment when you work with surface science, there’s a lot of shiny metallic, giant pieces of equipment and it’s always fun. And the topic was very interesting. So I started working on graphene and, it’s a cool material. And at that time I was doing something called angle result photomission spectroscopy.
Very long name basically means, you shoot lights. In our case, mostly from a synchrotron, you take electrons out, everybody knows the photoelectric effect, it’s basically that. [00:10:00] But we have specifically designed equipment that captures these electrons, keeps all the information about them, and we get very, very pretty pictures of electronic bands.
So, things that tell you if a material is a topological insulator, semiconductor, and so on, we directly get pictures of that. So I work with 2d materials and this technique and that’s also when I started doing this time result ARPIS.
And I decided I want to learn a bit more about something that is not ARPIS, which was my main technique, time result ARPIS. So I went to Australia where I was working in a low temperature scanning tunneling microscopy lab. So I will. I went for looking from just looking at electrons to looking at pictures of atoms with a fancy microscope.
Let me just recap. So from Croatia to Denmark and now we are in Australia. And now we’re in Australia. So it’s sort of like, you [00:11:00] know, you start, let’s say Central Europe ish. And then you go North, very much South, North and then less North.
But yeah, in Australia, I worked a bit with STM and, it gives you, let’s say you learn more techniques. You also see what you like better. And it was a great time. I worked with very nice people. And Melbourne is. I still claim it’s the nicest city in all of Australia for living. It’s great. but then I decided that I, the thing I like best is this time result artists.
So I moved for my second postdoc in Sweden, right before COVID hits. of course we were in Sweden, so you were still in lab work was deemed essential. So we’re still working in a lab. during my postdoctoral stay there, I basically helped build a lab. And that’s something that was very helpful when I was applying for a position later because I could say, well, I do have experience with moving a building from one end of the [00:12:00] city to another, setting up a lab.
so that experience was really helpful. And of course, I, I again work with Time Resolved Artists, which is this dynamic thing that they were looking for here in the Netherlands. Okay. so we started in Croatia, then we went to Denmark, then we went to Australia, then we came back to Sweden, and now we are in Netherlands.
And now we’re in the Netherlands. For now, I’m curious where you will be. the next time you are on under the microscope, acquisition. So I have tenure track position. Yeah. So if, if I’m tenured in, let’s say approximately four years, then I might still be in the Netherlands. Next time we talk. True. Or you go on sabbatical in some other country or somewhere on sabbatical.
That is, that’s a good idea. That could also work. Yeah. I remember last time we spoke, you were telling me about, the fact that you are moving equipment. I think that [00:13:00] was around the time when you featured on Under the Microscope. I remember that. That is That is so much fun.
I will say I don’t recommend moving labs during COVID or any kind of pandemic. that’s not so much fun, but, it worked out in the end and, I was with a good team. So I was teamed with one of my very good friends. We also did PhD together. He’s now permanent researcher at KDH. two of us were designated joint moving teams.
So I had very good company, even though, yeah. Pandemic time, interesting. Yeah, interesting years. Indeed. Yes, definitely. So before we move on, I do want to ask you this, Antonia. It sounds very glamorous. You know, when you summarize, yeah, I have lived in two different continents and I’ve been in different labs and leaving the pandemic out of it.
Of course, it sounds really glamorous and attractive, but I’m sure it wasn’t what I like. What is give me one like downside of being a traveling scientist? [00:14:00] Oh, I like to put my guests on the spot. I mean, it sounds hard, but you do have to think that, you know, you’re moving a lot. You have to, you have to deal with paperwork, figure out bank every time you move, find an apartment, maybe visas.
Those are always fun, completely different from every one place to another. You could end up very far from your friends, family. you also gain friends from all over the world. it’s great for, you know, if you want to visit them, but I have very good friends and some are in, completely different parts of the world.
So you don’t even get to see them that much. And even just, doing a zoom call is a pain because time zones. it sounds glamorous, but. there’s a part of having to pack and pack very often, which is not so fun. Trying to settle and saying, goodbye to friends every few years that part is definitely less [00:15:00] fun.
Okay, let’s go back into the scientist side of you, Antonia. So it’s, I mean, this question I’m going to ask again. If you have to pick one research project that you’re most proud of or the most fun or quirky one Can you pick one today? Yeah, we are not playing favorites.
Well, we are kind of playing favorites here can you pick one research project and explain it to us in the section? We call in other words, and the last time you spoke with us about the 2d materials and the, and the bits, the spin and the valley, exactly what you referred to, what you’re doing now. so that was your favorite project.
The last time you were on under the microscope for anyone who wants more details, put the links to the past episodes in the show notes, they can go into it, but today. Tell me what is that one research project that is like, Oh my God, that was so [00:16:00] cool. So, well, I still love the one you referred to. My new favorite is, so we have a recent publication on something we call this method.
Welcome brainstorming to come up with, English word on K that fits the method, but, basically while I was in Sweden, I started with a colleague of mine, We came up with this, way of making 2D materials, but completely in ultra high vacuum, which is a surface scientists must have, thing. So usually when you make 3D materials, people use sticky tape, right?
And then we get nicest quality materials, but they’re usually very small. And for surface science, it’s a problem. We need much larger materials. We need the whole surface to be uniform, nice, clean. Like a few years ago, there was this work where people used gold as a sticky tape.
So they sort of put it on a polymer, they peel things off. it’s really cool. They used gold [00:17:00] to sort of You know, you take your layered material, you take gold and then your layered material peels off on top of your gold. this is a vacuum, right?
This is not happening. this is in air or a glove box. it was actually something made for, large flakes for devices. they would just remove all of this gold away and so on. we do surface science. I do electronic structure. You have these electrons all flying out.
We like having gold as a substrate. my friends said we have gold here, like single crystal of gold. How about we make it clean and. do our surface science thing, make clean gold, clean layered crystal, piece them together, and we see what happens.
And, yeah, it was a brilliant, like, summer project. Everybody was on holidays, and we were in a lab. Nobody can stop you and tell you it’s a terrible idea to take single crystal of gold. And we did it, and it worked from first. And I’m also happy to report no single crystals were harmed in this [00:18:00] process.
So we got this like fairly large flake of, like tungsten diselenide, we could do ARPES measurements, which is, you know, we did regular one, not the fancy versions with microscopic beam.
And, but of course for publication, you need a bit more evidence. so this was right when I was leaving from KTH to Groningen. So it’s also like my first project from Groningen coming out. My friend and I, so, he’s really, really great. we gathered, what one of the colleagues called international team of scientific besties.
Oh, I love that. So we applied for Syncretron time and we got 10 days on, what I call, back home. So place where we, Mac and I did PhD. And together with us, we had another colleague from PhD, who flew all the way from Canada and the person who did postdoc who flew from the UK. And we worked with one [00:19:00] of our old colleagues there.
And in 10 days, we worked like crazy doing this, case exfoliation on so many different, Materials we also tried not only gold but silver and germanium and we got a really nice publication, It was a really fun project let’s just take this super fancy crystal of gold smoosh things together See if it works then we got to work with our very good friends so it was also like a family reunion.
It was really cool And it worked right. Scientifically what you wanted to do that work, you could exfoliate the kiss method. Yeah, we could exfoliate. We got some flakes that were, I mean, some are smaller than the others, depending how good you are in alignment and things. So some are, let’s say 50, a hundred microns.
We had some that are like a millimeter in size, which is Just awesome. That is for a nano scientist. That is like, okay, my job here is done. [00:20:00] I can retire now. Wow. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. And, like also really nice part is that other people also like are using it now. So actually group in Denmark has now.
A paper under review on completely different class of materials. So we did a lot of transition metal, like alkogenites, thanks to the sulfite included. Also air sensitive ones. That was like the big goal because, well, you know, you don’t care material is air sensitive if it never leaves vacuum, so. All good.
But yeah, they use it on a completely different type of material, one of these 2D magnets. And yeah, it’s really, really cool. So it’s something also that I hope is going to be useful to, other, at least surface scientists. but we’re also using it here in Groningen and, like guys at KTH use it.
It’s also used in UBC. So it’s quite neat. Oh, that is so cool. And I love the part of international team of scientific besties or science besties. I [00:21:00] love that. I wish I could take credit for that, but it was one of the colleagues from This experimental time. So she came up with the name and I really loved it.
So I just had to steal it. We are going to, it’s the name now. That’s the name. that’s the name we are going with it. We all have your scientific besties. Please tell me you have tons of pictures and tons of more science like going into the details of the surface and how did you did it with gold and silver and germanium and how it was different for the different ones.
What was the best combination and all of that. Please tell me you’re gonna Tell all the followers of real scientist nano And we do have what we call dream team picture unfortunately, one team member was was missing but he had covid but like the core The core drink team is in a picture. So I mean, I love it.
Oh, that sounds really cool. That sounds really cool. So, Antonia, it’s, it’s. [00:22:00] It’s very clear to me. It was clear to me the first time we spoke as well, which was a few years ago that you love the research aspect of being a scientist.
And I can see and feel when you talk about the science that you love the research aspect of being a scientist. But what else do you like about being a scientist? Well, I think it’s also maybe obvious after previous answer. it’s My nice colleagues, you get to meet very, very, different people from all over the world, you know, the team that went to Denmark, like a lot of us actually worked in Denmark, but we had a person from, you know, I’m from Croatia.
One of the colleagues from, we had two Italians, a person from Poland, U S so it’s sort of. All over the place, but we do have a lot of things in common. And also just hearing what people, I love hearing what people work on. So it’s still related to science, but you get to meet all of these like brilliant people with cool ideas.
That’s [00:23:00] like, it’s quite nice. Yeah, I can imagine. Yeah, totally. I mean it was quite evident from your previous answer. You’re right and I have to say I do miss that from my past life as I truly miss that so I would imagine you still need to Well, at least virtually meet a lot of people for under the microscope with like I mean, I, I enjoy, like following what people tweets and also hearing what, what they work on, because in some cases it’s super different from my field, you know, I’m a science, but then we have this nano part going on together, but sometimes even the words we use for the same thing are completely different, but just trying to figure out the vocabulary, It’s okay.
It’s a bit of a work, but it can be like, really, really fun. It is a lot of fun. I mean, Antonia, congratulations on getting the tenure track position. This is really great. if you had three wishes to improve your experience as a scientist or your research experience, what would you ask [00:24:00] for?
I have your answers from a few years ago. I will tell you those answers after you tell me your three wishes. Today in 2023. What are your three wishes to improve your research experience? as last time, not promising anything new, so I think one of the ones from last time did come true and one will again.
But in this case, I’ll say my first wish is actually to do more research. Once you move from, you know, being a postdoc or a PhD, working in the lab, like very often into an assistant professor position, there’s a lot of new responsibilities, including, for example, teaching.
It can be very rewarding. Like I had some really nice students, unfortunately, it doesn’t always work out, but there is also, a lot of paperwork you have to figure out, especially when you move to, like, I’ve never lived in or worked in the Netherlands before, so just trying to figure out the paperwork part, you lose a decent amount of time for research, so I miss some of the time, [00:25:00] I still get to go and do experiments with my students, which is great, and, Help them with measurements and analysis.
I do wish I had, you know, more time to actually focus on science, reading papers to just, you know, to have a whole way just reading papers. And if I’m writing a grant, just like, oh, I can focus for three days, reading papers, and then I can write my thing and just think of science without all the other things popping up on the side.
the second one would be, and I think this was maybe also second wish last time that, we’re better with like doing open science with less obstacles. I do have to say University of Groningen is like really, really good with open science. we even have a science, let’s say a division, people who work on it, helping to improve it, even also spread to open education, which is really cool.
But there’s, there’s still like these. Like random obstacles you encounter. So for example, the paper we were planning to, the, the kiss paper, it turned out that, you [00:26:00] know, while our university has a deal with a publisher, it doesn’t have a deal that particular type of journal, then it’s either, you know, I’m cashing out 2, 000, but then it’s.
Turned out that, you know, KDH has a fully free publishing agreement And then just trying to coordinate this is like me and my like Matt and I were just like, okay I’ve prepared everything but now you need to register you got a link and You just have to click a button. It’s I feel like it should be simpler and We are we’re the lucky ones, you know, we have an agreement and well different different levels of agreement Let’s say but sometimes see that for example, you have much better agreements in chemistry biomedical fields some of the journals that we traditionally publish in are not necessarily You know really covered And I do think like, you know, these things are expensive So i’m in the netherlands we can put some of the funding money just dedicated for open access But that’s not a thing in every [00:27:00] country.
So well, it’s a nice thing. It still requires like To make it simpler and actually more accessible. Yeah, absolutely. I would wish that people actually may learn, know a bit better what we’re actually doing. it’s really funny, you know, like you’re a physicist and everybody’s like, okay, you’re Sheldon from big bang theory, or, you know, it’s like, well, most of us are slightly more adept at, you know, human skills.
There is also part that, you know, yes, I do research and being in the lab is a big part of my work, but I also do teaching grant proposals and it’s actually still part of the science, like the grant proposals and paper writing. Sometimes people are like, but you’re not in the lab all the time.
It’s like, well, I get data, but this data has to be shown to people. And sometimes people are like, Oh, you’re professors. Oh, so you just teach and you’re like. No, I teach and yeah, we wear a [00:28:00] lot of hats in, in our responsible, like as a, as professors, it’s sometimes I think way too many, it’s ridiculous how many things you get to do, but I do feel like people don’t really know all the things that are involved.
Like. Like research is great. Yes, but there’s you know, these things also actually counted research and like papers grants Yes, i’m also teaching and no teaching is not the only thing I do. So like I do think it would be nice if Like people also think where you know often we’re in these ivory towers and we never see people outside of university And it’s like most of us are just regular people.
We do leave academic buildings once in a while When job allows us and things like that Yeah, yeah, I think I think that’s that’s important as well because people don’t really know professors do also because in different cultures, professors do different things or they’re associated with different topics.
[00:29:00] So for anyone who is listening. On spotify or apple podcast or whatever, please Watch the video on youtube because antonia is wearing a wonderful dress which has bats and skulls and stars and Planets and trees and all of that and an amazing background as well. And she’s not in the lab right now. She is not.
can you tell me why you’re wearing such a nice, fun dress with bats? Is it a Batman vibe? What what’s happening today? Oh, I’m I really liked the dress. So I also, I feel like, you know, I should. We also often imagine professors written a very particular way and I like to dress to express also things I like.
So, you know, I like metal music, so sometimes you’ll see me in funny dresses with bats, but also [00:30:00] today we have, our semester started recently and we have an intro day for students to explain them different. let’s say tracks or streams within physics. So I’ll be, co presenting, nanophysics today. So I thought, you know, I should, I should dress up.
Yeah, absolutely. You go Antonia. Absolutely. That’s, that, that is, that is so great. This is just to show people that the human side of our scientists. Human side of Antonia. Okay, just to summarize your wishes, you would like more time for research, you would like, open science with less obstacles, and people to understand, the job as a scientist or as a professor better, like what all different hats you have to wear.
So those are Antonia’s wishes in 2023, September or October 2023. And the last time Antonia was on the podcast, as promised, her three wishes were, Blue sky research [00:31:00] to be a bit more prioritized. I think that’s why that you meant a little more really basic research. Exactly. We don’t have every time we’ll solve, you know, all the energy problems on the planet and stuff like that.
Basic research being extremely important and recognition for the importance of the basic, basic research, fundamental research. Yeah, fundamental research because, you know, I, we have no idea what some of these things that we work on will be used in a few years. Everybody wanted to make graphene in a transistor.
It’s not a very good transistor, but there’s ways to make one or but it’s, for example, an excellent heat sink or very good. It can be in touch screens, so it’s completely like different things. We didn’t even think of. Absolutely. So that was your first wish. The second wish was permanent position, which is something that has happened.
And the third wish was about the open [00:32:00] source publications. And using the service like archive, like preprint service like archive and stuff. So those were your I’m still into the third one still so So just in just so you know last time we spoke was in 2020 and I just checked the date and it was Around this week, around this time, at the end of September 2020, is when, when we recorded your previous podcast episode, so it’s what, it’s three years ago.
Now I’m wondering if it’s even the same week I’m going to be tweeting. Probably. I’m going to double check that for you. That, that is so cool. So, Antonia, as expected by me, this has been wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Before I let you go, You’re also going to tweet from the Real Scientist Nano Twitter account, or X account, or whatever the fuck [00:33:00] it is called now, the website.
we still call it Twitter, right? It’s just this X, but it’s like www. twitter. com. Yeah, it’s still twitter. com. Yeah. So you will be tweeting from the Real Scientist Nano Twitter account. If you’re interested, we are also on Mastodon. We are also on Blue Sky, which is yet another thing, but what can all these followers expect in the week that you’re taking over the account?
So one thing I’ll definitely tweet about is, we’re actually organizing a conference on quantum magnetic materials. So there’s going to be a lot of tweeting about well magnetic materials on now scale. I will also read a bit about teaching because I will be, commuting our first part of the conference because I have my teaching course.
So, In the Netherlands. They also they care about your teaching quite a lot. So we have, we have a course to make us better lectures. So I’ll tweet a bit about teaching because I will actually be taking them during the class [00:34:00] in that. And of course, about the course. You know, all the different science we do, and I’ll try to include a bit of like things I’ve done to get to this position, but also some of the responsibilities I have also, you know, things like, it actually takes me eight hours to prepare a lecture when I’m teaching for the first time, because you got to make it look nice, make it, you know, right pace for students and things like that.
Anything interesting that pops up that week. the kiss project. And of course the kiss method, that one will definitely be included. Maybe not on Monday, when we kick off, but during the week for sure. Yeah, that was a thing I quite enjoyed. So I’m looking forward to tweeting about it.
That’s excellent. So there’s going to be from your workshop, from the other workshop, you being on the road also about your research, including the KISS project. And lots more. Okay, excellent. That is awesome. And I just checked and you are absolutely right in 2020 [00:35:00] You took over the account in week 42 and this year also you are taking over the account in week 42 So, you know, 42 is the answer to everything.
So exactly, exactly. 42 is the answer to everything. this is perfect. Well, thank you very much, Antonia, for your time. So much fun speaking with you yet again, and cannot wait to follow your tweets on Real Scientists Nano. This has been wonderful. Thank you very much for your time and looking forward.
Yeah, looking forward as well. also to chatting to everyone who does respond to tweets. Everyone go respond to tweets. thank you, Antonio.
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KISS of Light
Antonija is a Tenure Track Professor at University of Groningen (the Netherlands).