I grew up in a middle class family in Kerala, India. I lived my childhood in a village, then got the opportunity to spend my student years in a city like Hyderabad and currently live in the city state of Singapore, which gave me a taste of both worlds. I am still a fan of the rustic way of life, where life was more colorful - although childhood nostalgia may be adding a bias to my argument.
My interest in physics started in 6th grade. Having some really great teachers in high school made me like the subject more, and I chose to be a physics student for life. I graduated with a university gold medal in 5-year integrated Masters degree in Physics from University of Hyderabad (UoH), during which time I had a taste of research while working at labs in UoH, Indian Institute of Science and Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Those were however just baby steps as my research career started from NTU, when I joined as a PhD student in 2018. Having done mostly pen-and-paper research till then, it was a slightly sudden shift to experimental research in ultrafast spectroscopy at this point - and I have strived to straddle the learning curve that is part of it. My PhD is still a work in progress until I achieve the final intended outcome of being a confident, independent thinker (or until 4 years of my research scholarship ends - whichever happens earlier :P ). I also worked as a teaching assistant at NTU for undergraduate physics courses.
My other interests are books, travel and politics. Among books I like to read non-fiction, and recently have taken a liking to books on history. My recent favorite is "The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History" by Sanjeev Sanyal. I travel to experience different cultures and adventures, with a Canon 80D in my hand. My interests in politics have been shaped by life at UoH, a bastion of liberal social political thought in India. I have never been vocal about my politics on the internet, and rather prefer face-to-face exchanges. My knowledge and opinions have evolved over the years based on new findings and this is perhaps the single biggest pursuit of my life - A seeker constantly in search of learning and discovering - much like in this picture, where I am in a small long-tailed boat in the vast ocean exploring the beautiful Phi Phi Islands.
You can also find a post about me from my friend's perspective in his blog:
