Abhishek Kumar Gupta

PhD student at the University of Amsterdam

What is your background?

I did my master’s work in Soft matter physics at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. We studied dynamics of sheared colloidal glasses. I also worked on few projects related to ML and AI at companies and used deep learning to track particles.

What inspired you to pursue a career in a science-related field?

I was very curious to know about nature from early childhood and my parents motivated me to have a good knowledge of math and physics. I also got very good mentors and teachers who helped me to understand different concepts in science and build my curiosity by telling me about great research works by scientists. Also, doing lot of projects and internships inspired me to pursue career in science.

What is your role within the SSLiP project? How do you expect your work will contribute to your career development?

I am a PhD student in the SSLiP project from University of Amsterdam. My role is to develop methods for experimental visualisation of tribocolloids while doing rheological measurements. We closely work with different groups in collaboration to get inputs and feedback on new ideas.

My academic career started from SSLiP project and I hope we do great research here. I will also get mentored by different expert partners and will learn to work in a big collaboration.

What are the activities in your current position that you find the most interesting?

The most interesting part of my project is that we are scaling-up superlubricity at macroscale and we can use visualisation techniques to see tribocolloids in experiments. I also get to work now with 2D materials and do Raman, PL and AFM experiments.

Do you have any advice for future professionals in this field?

My advice is that pursue this career if you love exploring things, understanding the fundamentals, not taking setback if experiments fails and want to make impact in the society with your research.