This biography is a long-winded, personal summing up of the broad experiences, achievements, and important developmental stages of my life. It is a work in progress. It’s my life history as I see it. I’ll keep adding chapters as they come, and editing stuff, until I am dead and gone.

Biography

Birth and Schooling (1978-1996)

I was born in February 1978 in Calcutta, India. My father works for the Ministry of External Affairs of the Indian Government. As a result, my growing up years involved lots of travel to different countries, experiencing different cultures, and seeing various historic events first hand.

I am the little guy standing with the gun.

 

When I was about 1 year old, we got posted to Bangladesh. I don’t remember much of Dacca. Visions of my mom from the playpen, smoked hilsa fish, calling up a friendly lady by accident while playing with the phone, measles, a black and white television, a cake baked on sand, frightening cob-webs in the bathroom of Willies Little Flower School . . . these are random fragments of my earliest memories.

In 1982, we moved to Kandy, Sri Lanka. I did my lower KG through first grade there, in Trinity College. There was a brief three-month break in my education when schools were closed, during some very turbulent times in Sri Lankan history. The LTTE had been fighting the Sri Lankan government for control of the northern regions, and things got pretty out of hand (and the Indian Peace Keeping Force stepped in to help reestablish control in the region). A mob came and burnt our house down with petroleum jelly. Fortunately, the Sri Lankan government had evacuated us the night before. The kitchen was the only part of the house left intact (so we got to retrieve our dishes), but the rest of our stuff, especially sentimental stuff like my parents wedding photos, were all destroyed. We (and the rest of the embassy staff) were housed and protected in the Swiss Hotel for about 3 months, before life went back to normal and we moved into a new house.

Playing with my Lego in Sri Lanka

I don't have too many memories from Kandy. There used to be a black upright piano in our house that I played once. My mom used to teach me math using a slate and chalk. I loved toy guns and lego's. Scorpions and other insects would sometimes crawl up the bath tub or walk around the house, and that was scary. After Sri Lanka, my dad was posted back to headquarters in New Delhi. I studied in grades 2-4 at the Raisina Bengali School. My mom started working there, initially as a science and math teacher in my school, and later securing a “permanent” position in Bengali Boys Senior Secondary School. I was generally studious (usually ranking within the top 5 in school), somewhat shy, and not that big on sports. I learnt to speak Hindi fluently (an ability I have lost since then due to lack of practice). In Sri Lanka, I didn’t have that many kids to play with near my house, though I did have some friends in school. After coming to Delhi, it was wonderful to suddenly have a lot of friends. I was very sad to leave them behind, when we moved to West Germany.

I studied in the British Embassy Preparatory School in Bonn from grades 4 through 7. We visited many European countries during those years: France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and even East Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall. These were mostly road trips with my parents. I hit puberty in Germany, with all its associated implications. I remember Germany as a time when many of my present hobbies and interests started. I read voraciously, learnt German, started playing the keyboards, became fairly good at Table Tennis, and joined some intensive swimming classes. Extensive travel and new skills broadened my world.

My mom feeling cold in Germany.

Came back to India and joined Raisina School again in 8th grade. It was tough going because I suddenly had to study Sanskrit, Hindi, and Bengali, and I merely managed to scrape by the first year in these courses. By the time I reached class 10 (with those languages out of the way), I was ranked 2nd in my class of over 150 students. I became significantly more independent, appearance-conscious, and started taking myself a lot more (maybe too) seriously during my stay in Delhi. I also became heavily interested in astrology. Times spent in India usually helped ground me in my own culture and language. After my tenth board CBSE board exams, we moved to Myanmar.

My junior and senior year of high school was spent at the International School of Yangon. I had a wonderfully involved time there . . . member of the Students Council, Editor-in-Chief of the School Newspaper, while maintaining a 3.99 GPA, and finishing off 3 Advanced Placement Courses (Chemistry, Biology, and Calculus). I was the only student chosen to represent my school at a Forensics (public speaking/debate) tournament in Malaysia. It was fun being looked up to as a bit of a model student in your school . . . a sort of celebrity status for the present, and dreams of wonderful prospects for the future.

Indian Embassy Performance in Yangon.

Following this high was some of the most miserable times of my privileged life: looking for colleges to join in India. After a few months of uncertainty and misery, I got accepted into Chemistry (Hons) in St. Stephens Delhi (which I attended for 2 weeks), and then B. Pharm (Hons) in BITS Pilani. My parents returned to Myanmar, while I packed my bags and joined Pilani.

BITS Pilani, my Undergraduate Years. (1996-2000.)

I have lots of very fond memories of my time in BITS.

Academically, I had a tough time coping initially with the prevalent standards of math . . .though I was considered very good at math in the American high school in Burma. Towards the end of my BITSian career, I think things worked out just fine academically. I enjoyed pharmacy, but felt a greater fascination for genetics and molecular biology. So in my senior year, I took electives in Recombinant DNA technology, and my Practice School in Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow was spent in an X-Ray crystallography lab doing primarily molecular and protein work.

In my first year in Pilani, I was involved with the Music Club, Publications and Correspondence Department (PCR), and the English Press Club. Come second semester, I realized that I needed to concentrate more on academics . . . and dropped Music Club and PCR. I did go on to be APOGEE coordinator for the English Press Club in March 1998. Speaking of press, Pankaj (a good friend of mine) and I did my internship in the Hindustan Times, summer of 1997. We were involved with the launch of HT School Times and wrote many of its first articles. We had a good time interviewing interesting and important people in Delhi for our articles.

BITS was important personally too. Anyesha joined Pilani in 1997. I made other lasting friendships in BITS-- people I am still in touch with today. But Anyesha turned out to be particularly special. After a 5-month courtship, we became “an item” around February of 1998.

University of Maryland, Doctor of Philosophy, (2000-2006.)

My parents had been posted to Washington DC while I was still doing my six month internship at the Central Drug Research Institute. I joined them in 2000, and decided to pursue a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park in Dr. Louisa Wu's lab. My work involved the study of innate immune responses in Drosophila melanogaster. Over the next six years, my work coalesced into two publishable stories. One involved the study of Destruxin, a fungal secondary metabolite that appeared to suppress Drosophila immune pathways. The other was a more descriptive study of the role of Rel/NF-KappaB factors on Drosophila immune responses. I also published a couple of review articles and presented my work at international conferences. I succesfully defended my dissertation in November 2006. For more information, visit my work page.

The first two years of my PhD was spent living with my parents. Which was nice because you don't have to worry about a lot of things. But after living away for many years and getting used to an independent life, this shift can also be tough at times. My parents went back to India at the end of 2002. I became active with student community building through the Students Council of India. I was also involved with web design as the web administrator of scimd.org, and created this website shortly afterwards from the experience gained. The following year, I got together with some friends to form our own Indian music band called Antardhwani. We performed at various places, enjoyed some popularity, and had a great time. My final years were spent concentrating on my research and writing.

Anyesha finished her Masters from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and started working with Maryland's State Highway Administration from November 2003. Eight years into our relationship, we got married in March 2006.

[top]

Naval Medical Research Center, (2007-present)

---

About this Website

I've had a Continuous web presence since my Geocities Join date: 1999-11-11 04:34.

It is a shameless self-promotional website designed to showcase my skills, abilities, and interests.

It has gone through 3 major revisions. The first site was constructed on microsoft word, and uploaded onto the geocities webspace. Because of limited net access from BITS Pilani, I could not view the page after uploading, in November 1999.

The second revision was made after coming to the US. It involved garish blue, yellow and red colors. But it was a vast improvement over the first site.

What you see now is a crisper website, designed to fit in with the overall look of my blog. I hadn't updated my site in ages, and I figured a redesign of the site is in order to stay up to date with latest technologies, such as blogger, flickr, etc. Also, I have gained much experience over the past two years, being the webadmin of the Students Council of India Website. So figured it was time to put it to good use.

Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign!