Charulatha Jain | Mending Thought

Mending Thought
Charulatha Jain | Mending Thought Podcast

Mending thought attempts to demystify career choices and thoughts by presenting insights as what each career profession demands, skills needed and it is an audio experience to assist millennials in decision making of their career choices; by sharing stories that are real and guides to explore the opportunities that lie ahead.

Episodes

  1. 12/11/2022

    The Star Shining in the Space and Dancing in the Gallery of Galaxies | Charulatha Jain in conversation with Nivedita Mahesh

    Nivedita Mahesh was born and brought up in Coimbatore, India. She received her first research opportunity at Raman Research Institute while pursuing her Bachelor's in Instrumentation engineering at PSG Tech. At RRI she learned the possibilities of using her engineering skills to solve unanswered questions in Astrophysics. There was no looking back from there. She landed a control engineer job at ABB right after undergrad but quickly quit it for a research position back at RRI. She built the first-ever space beam splitter to study our early universe. Understanding the need for more formal education in Electromagnetics, she pursued Electrical Engineering at UCLA. With her goal of still wanting to contribute to research in astronomy, she attended a number of classes in astrophysics in addition to carrying out a research project on White Dwarfs. She then went on to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics at Arizona State University where she worked on two projects - EDGES and FARSIDE. One is located in remote western Australia and with the other, she aims to place a telescope on the Moon's surface! For the FARSIDE project, Nivedita won the NASA FINESST fellowship - her proposal was one among the 26 nationally funded projects that add about 188 entries. After successfully completing her PhD she is set to join the Radio astronomy group at CalTech with the prestigious David and Ellen Lee Prize fellowship. Understanding the need to highlight the achievements of women and women mentors in all walks of life, Nivedita co-founded the initiative Letters For Our Girls which highlights letters of power, hope and dreams fulfilled addressed to South Asian women. Outside of research, you will find Nivedita exploring her passion for dance. She is a trained Bharatanatyam dancer and has been practicing for over 22 years. At ASU she co-founded the Indian classical dance team - Swarajathi. She is always interested in experimenting with the dance form to show more relatable stories to the audience. Currently, she is also learning the BharataNityam extension to learn the Karanas from the original Natya Shastras. She working with her group at ASU to put together a dance production to showcase her Astrophysics Ph.D. thesis. Other than Indian classical dance, Nivedita has dabbled in Bollywood, Hip Hop, and belly dancing at various levels. She has choreographed for cultural events at ASU and started a dance page to continue exploring her second passion.

    32 min

About

Mending thought attempts to demystify career choices and thoughts by presenting insights as what each career profession demands, skills needed and it is an audio experience to assist millennials in decision making of their career choices; by sharing stories that are real and guides to explore the opportunities that lie ahead.

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