‘My video has six million views’

Martina Hestericová’s Instagram photos and videos have been viewed millions of times. Her posts are mostly from a lab at the University of Basel in Switzerland. They include her streaking petri dishes, freezing samples in liquid nitrogen, synthesising silica nanoparticles and playing with gooey polymers – all brief vignettes from her working life. ‘The most successful are the ones showing me while I work, which surprised me,’ says Hestericová. ‘Colours really work, such as chromatography on time lapse.’