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Dr. Celia S. Chari is the Beal Family Postdoctoral Fellow at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies in Harvard University
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About Celia
About Celia
My interests lie in material science and its applications: from aerospace engineering to art conservation. I received my MSc and PhD in Materials Science from The California Institute of Technology, where my doctoral work focused on the performance and degradation of advanced high-temperature ceramics, as well as historic ceramics. I am currently the Beal Family Postdoctoral Fellow at the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums.
I work alongside materials scientists, chemists, geochemists, conservators and curators on technical and scientific examinations of works of art in the museum’s collection - from 3rd century Celtic bronze jewelry to 14th century Spanish altarpieces. I study light-induced alteration mechanisms of mineral pigments in collaboration with Harvard's Center for Nanoscale Systems and Center for Crystallographic Studies. I also use spectroscopic techniques combined with deep learning algorithms to non-invasively identify pigments in works on paper, predominantly Indian manuscripts.
Recent News
July 2025: Led experiment at the PUMA beamline at synchrotron SOLEIL (Saint-Aubin, France) studying funerary red-figure pottery (c. 430-420 BCE) using µ-XRF and µ-XANES
📖 May 2025: New paper out in npj Heritage Science : Characterization of Indian pigments: investigating the color palette of a traditional Jaipuri workshop!
May 2025: Presented with colleague Nicole Ledoux at the 53rd annual conference of the American Institute for Conservation, with our talk titled High-temperature Degradation of Athenian Red-figure Pottery Used in Cremation Burials
📖 May 2025: New paper out in Journal of Electric Propulsion : Evaluation of Graphite/h-BN Bimaterials for Electric Propulsion!
April 2025: Invited to present a talk on my research at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum Conservation Institute's "Topics in Museum Conservation", titled Illuminating Art: Materials Science in Conservation and Technical Art History
February 2025: Visited the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for two weeks to analyze folios from a 16th century Indian manuscript for Harvard University's Mapping Color in History project. Invited to present a talk on my research to the department
📌 October 2024: Carried out my Beal Family fellowship research stay at the Ancient Materials group in ENS Paris-Saclay's Supramolecular and Molecular Photophysics and Photochemistry Laboratory (PPSM)
📌 July 2024: Co-chaired the Gordon Research Seminar on Scientific Methods in Cultural Heritage Research in Les Diablerets, Switzerland. Details of the program can be found here
📌 May 2024: Imagine Me and You: Dutch and Flemish Encounters with the Islamic World, 1450-1750 made its debut at the Harvard Art Museums. Read more about my scientific research contributions to this exhibition here
📌 October 2023: Attended Rising Stars in Materials Science & Engineering Workshop, Carnegie Mellon University
My doctoral work was featured in the above video from Caltech's Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science. Watch it here!
Click below to hear my Icon Emerging Heritage Science Researcher presentation on Meissen porcelain glazes (Sep, 2022):
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