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Arula Ratnakar

@arula-ratnakar.bsky.social

2.3K followers 660 following 2.6K posts

2nd year computational neuro PhD student at Boston University (advisors Cynthia Bradham & Gabe Ocker) Mathematically modeling embryonic neurodevelopment I write trippy scifi & mathfiction. Ignyte Award Finalist 2025 6 stories in Clarkesworld 26 yrs old

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · Jun 9

I am thrilled to announce my novella “Fractal Karma” is an Ignyte Award Finalist.

I’m listed next to authors who seriously inspire me. Incredible finalist list 🤯

Thank you so much @clarkesworldmagazine.com for publishing my weird mathfiction & the @theignyteawards.bsky.social jury for this honor ❤️

The Ignyte Awards @theignyteawards.bsky.social · Jun 9

The #IgnyteAwards finalists for the Outstanding Novella category is for speculative works ranging from 17,500-39,999 words. Congratulations to the following titles and their authors.

Finalists in Outstanding Novella

FRACTAL KARMA – Arula Ratnakar (Clarkesworld)

LOST ARK DREAMING – Suyi Okungbowa Davies (Tordotcom)

THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST – Premee Mohamed (Tordotcom)

THE DRAGONFLY GAMBIT – A. D. Sui (Neon Hemlock)

THE PRACTICE, THE HORIZON, AND THE CHAIN – Sofia Samatar (Tordotcom)

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 12h

Lowkey teaching is so scary lol. I’ve never taught a class of undergrads in person before but I am this year as a TF. I definitely need practice 🥲

Idk, how do people manage teaching a group of people, managing their group project dynamics etc, anticipating questions, being assertive/an authority…

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 22h

Thanks! I’ll read MTW. It’s kind of obvious I should do this, now that I think about it. if I want to use these methods for my neuroscience theories I need to conceptually know what they are used for in physics properly.

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

(Not that I can currently visualize all tensors well … I’ll read the recommended books though, and learn more physics — might as well study up on the concepts of GR if I’m learning all the methods for it!)

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

Maybe the issue is I haven’t learned enough physics. It would be hard to visualize biology without knowing biology. It would probably help if I read up on e.g general relativity too instead of trying to piece things together just from mathematical methods. I’ll check out the Baez and Muniain book!

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

I’ll check these out! I want to get to a point where I have more intuition about tensors!

calculus of variations has been far easier to “visualize” (but I’m also more familiar with it bc functional analysis is used a ton in theoretical neuro and my math advisor does statistical field theory)

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 23h

That’s fair, the problems I’ve seen with wild things like that were to get us to practice index notation and familiarize with tensor transformation laws, less so having real application.

I can see how up to total rank 4 things are doable to visualize.

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

How do you visualize something wild like a rank (5, 5) (contravariant, covariant) tensor? I have to rely on math only when I see something like that in a problem. My powers of visualization can only take me so far (at least right now) 😅

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

Also my fav advice: Treat it (any challenge, really) like you're playing the game Dark Souls and fighting a boss. Keep gaining skills, and eventually it'll work out. If you fail at something, what are the stakes, really? Often they're less dire than they seem, if you are alive, you can always retry.

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

not to take rejection personally if you apply. I was blanket rejected 3 years in a row before getting in. used the years to read a ton of literature & soul search for what I wanted to research & learn math. Also finished living out my messy early 20s before starting. Having fun in my program so far!

Nature @nature.com · 2d

What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone considering a PhD?

We asked 3785 doctoral candidates across 107 countries for their hard-won wisdom
go.nature.com/4nDjJ7t

27 things we wish we’d known when we started our PhDs

Nature’s survey of PhD candidates reveals hard-won wisdom on choosing supervisors, managing mental health and surviving academic culture.

go.nature.com

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

that makes sense. It's definitely a fear I have! burning out or becoming jaded/disillusioned about science. idk what I would do, science gives me hope and happiness!

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

If I successfully push myself, I'm inclined to then push myself even more. Idk where the limit is. Are there warning signs that you're approaching that limit to look out for?

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

What leads to burnout? I'm asking bc I really like to push myself/put myself in situations where I need to learn a bunch to 'just keep up' etc. it's a bit of a habit. I know taken to the extreme it wouldn't be a good thing though. But what is "taking it to the extreme"? How do you identify that?

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

This class is definitely harder than graduate Developmental Biology (which was my previous 'hardest class I've ever taken')

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

A bright side of taking this math physics class is that I think everything else I'm doing has become easy by comparison lmfao. My partial differential equations class feels like a respite, and so does some of the math I am doing for my research which would've been super intimidating to me last year.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

Maybe it's a good thing to learn how to model physical processes/phenomena without being able to "get a picture of" the thing. It's definitely uncomfortable and new to me because I rely a lot on "visualizing what's happening with a neuron" for my research haha. But maybe someday I won't be able to!

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

I will practice more 100%!

One difficult part of this class has been that everyone else in it is a physics PhD student, so they have a ton of intuition about physics I don’t. I have to treat things (like Maxwell’s equations or Minkowski spacetime or Lagrangians) like purely mathematical statements.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

I still need to practice problems involving a lot of covariant and contravariant index juggling and the Minkowski metric tensor though (I thought I understood but got confused on one of those in my exam 🥲)

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 1d

Oh man these are definitely rabbit holes. I signed up for the math physics class because I saw it covered complex integration, calculus of variations and some statistical field theory (which are all stuff that’s relevant to theoretical neuro) but Einstein notation was a weird extra bonus skill.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 3d

Oh a diagrammatic way sounds neat!

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 3d

idk how I’ll do on this exam in the morning BUT the ability to now think through literally the wildest vector calc identities with ease makes it all worth it regardless. Like, this took one page! Imagine proving it in vector notation bro I would die 😂

Proof of a vector calculus identity using Einstein notation

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 3d

Euler Lagrange problems are fine.

I think I’m getting the hang of working in Einstein notation but I need to practice a lot more today.

Class has been super hard but very interesting!

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 3d

This is an extension of me this weekend bc I have a mathematical physics exam tomorrow morning

My office chalkboard with derivation of Snell’s law via Euler Lagrange equations

My notebook, notes are in Einstein notation

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Reposted by Arula Ratnakar

Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 4d

Greed puts out the sun.

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Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 4d

That’s what I’ve hear from multiple people! one nice thing about entering the SFF community when I was 20 was that I got to interact w/ a lot of writers/readers who were older— as I’ve been living my chaotic 20s (getting less chaotic now thankfully) I’ve gotten to see/hear wisdom from the other side

Arula Ratnakar @arula-ratnakar.bsky.social · 4d

I like the idea of having a "different stream" that doesn't cross w/ a special interest stream. Never thought about it like that but it's a cool idea.

I hope 30's will be less chaotic than 20's haha. I've heard it is more peaceful. Getting older is a fascinating thing, looking forward to it.