I graduated from MIT in 2013 with a degree in Computational Biology, and spent a productive year working for the Healthcare team of Palantir Technologies before beginning my PhD at Stanford. I spent the first 18 years of my life in Bangalore, India, but if you compliment me with "your English is very good", you will get the response "thanks; so is yours".

One thing I'm uncommonly passionate about is improving the quality of political discourse. I find it disheartening that we tend to think in terms of "debates", where there is a "side" that "wins"; it leads to sloppy reasoning that people would easily see as flawed if they didn't feel so threatened by disagreement. Here is my take on the google manifesto, Aziz Ansari, and what happened to Scott Aaronson. You can find more of my thoughts on my facebook feed.

Here are some other details in no particular order: I'm a somewhat competent actor, and can do an entertaining rendition of "My Angry Vagina" from the Vagina Monologues that is all but guaranteed to make you laugh when delivered in a thick Indian accent (that said, I am not a huge fan of the play for several reasons). I love to dance to anthemic music. I'm queer. I have a weakness for scifi and fantasy. And I add Sriracha to everything.

I mention this because (1) there's an underenrichment of openly queer people in STEM, and (2) because it might mean I'm less likely to be harassed by random guys on the internet who then get angry when I explain I'm not interested (yes, this has happened).