A love moment to my family (Dad, Mom, Kaitlyn, and Estela), Nadeem + Navid Nathoo, Nyla Pirani, Alisha Arora, My Squads (Ruhani Walia, Kevin Zhu, Samson Zhang, Valmik Rao, Ayaan Esmail, Joshua Payne, Eesha Ulhaq, and Michael Ye), Isabel Armetis Dejesus, Emma  + Nicolina + Erin, Jennifer + Marcellus, Michelle Kwok, and Ha Tran Nguyen.

Thank you so much for all the support, accountability, advice, fun times, and more this past year. I feel a lot of gratitude to have you in my life and to be able to learn from + with you. 💜

Another love moment to all my newsletter readers. Thank you for following my journey. It means the world to me. 

Environment

Piezoelectricity: continued my focus on piezoelectricity with Kevin Zhu. Learned a ton about piezo, thermoelectricity, ferromagnetics, and other ways to harness kinetic energy this month. Will be wrapping up this focus with an analysis in early January.

Batteries: did a deep dive into batteries as part of a mini-challenge at TKS. Shoutout to my team: Ayaan Esmail, Ruhani Walia, and Shivang Mistry. Post challenge, we've spoken with people in batteries at Volkswagen and Boeing on our learnings. 

Conversation with David Fork: one of the highlights of my month was a conversation with David Fork (Renewable Energy Technologist, Physicist @ Google). I admire his work and left with many learnings from our convo. Specifically, I am excited about deep dives into flight electrification and railguns in the new year. 

Exploration

I didn't spend much time on exploration-related items this month. 

• I became more involved with Ocean Wise. This also ties into the environment as most of their efforts are towards protecting our oceans. 
• Took more Ocean School lessons. 
• Started tracking biological metrics to better understand my body as part of a female self-awareness project by Isabella Grandic.

Design

• Gave myself a design prompt to create garments out of wrapping paper. Made a dress and a corset. 
• Spent a day painting with my sisters. 
• Deep-dived into inclusive city design. Came up with a band system to help fxmales feel safer when walking around. 
• Continued biomimicry ideation for problems I was curious about: the sand crisis, nuclear waste, etc. 

Advocacy

• Finished my delegation at YOUNGA (The United Nation's Youth General Assembly) as a part of the Climate Action working group. 
  • Was featured in the Climate Action video to present our renewable energy recommendation summary.
  • I contributed to the Climate Action section of the Youth Delegate Communique.
• Officially, have my UN Women membership! 🥳
• Filmed a podcast episode as a guest for Top Of The Class.

More Mini Updates

• Loved the Abstract Docu-series! Tinker Hatfield, Bjarke Ingels, and Neri Oxman's episodes stood out to me. 
• I've been writing blogs on astrogirlwrites.com
• Another series I enjoyed was Home on the future of housing.

What's Next?

Watson Institute: I am thrilled to be starting courses and work as part of the Watson Semester Accelerator! My mission in the program is Environment and I'll be in the Venture Founder Track.

Nuclear Waste: Moving from piezoelectricity to nuclear waste. The emphasis will be on how we can improve storage or recycle nuclear waste utilizing biomimicry. 

My commitment focuses for the next few months are Watson and TKS (nuclear waste, philosophy...).