Beyond the lab.
I grew up in Chennai, Tamil Nadu — a city of 10 million people, strong opinions, filter coffee, Carnatic music drifting through apartment windows at 6am, and an absolute obsession with education. It is a place that takes ambition seriously and, in the same breath, roots you deeply in community. I carry both of those things wherever I go.
Tamil is my first language. I think in it when I'm tired, dream in it occasionally, and still find that some feelings only arrive fully formed in it. Being Tamil in Boston means belonging to two very different worlds at once — which I have found to be an advantage, not a burden.
My path here took me through three countries before Boston. Four years in Chennai studying biomedical engineering. Two years in Tokyo doing immunology research — learning Japanese well enough to navigate grocery stores and lab meetings, and discovering that I find foreign cities orienting in a way I cannot fully explain. Then Baltimore at Johns Hopkins, then San Diego, then Northeastern.
Each place changed something. Tokyo taught me patience and precision. Baltimore taught me how hospitals really work, and what it costs people to be sick. San Diego taught me what California says it believes about the future. Boston taught me that cold weather concentrates the mind.
I have been a member of Toastmasters long enough to have served as chapter president, which means I genuinely believe that learning to speak clearly in front of people is one of the most underrated skills a person can develop. I organize workshops on it and teach it to PhD students who, like me a few years ago, find the idea of public speaking more frightening than the work itself.
I am vegetarian — which in Boston requires some creativity and an encyclopedic knowledge of South Indian restaurants within a ten-mile radius. I have opinions about dosa.
I am involved with the New England Hindu Temple, which is a way of staying connected to a community and a practice I value more the farther I travel from home.
I have mentored 19 students, tutored fifth graders in Dorchester, stood at a middle school science fair at Clark University and tried to give real feedback on a project about neurotoxicity in fruit flies. I think these things matter — not because they look good on a CV, but because the PhD taught me things that are genuinely useful and it would be a shame to keep them to myself.
The gap between what research produces and what people actually need. How to make tools that earn trust, especially in health technology. Whether gamification respects people or manipulates them, and what the difference looks like in practice. How to defend a dissertation with integrity and then figure out what comes next.
I am also, slowly, learning to rest.