I once believed that - "Anything that could be said meaningfully, can be said mathematically". Now, I am interested in understanding the limits of this idea.

My interests have always been broad and I have found myself finding ways of bridging disparate fields of study. I did the inter-disciplinary course at University of Hyderabad, India which gave me a solid background in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Since I thought that mathematical modeling was the answer to the ambiguity and confusion, I majored in mathematics for its precision and formalization.

While I found the landscape of mathematics extremely beautiful, my existential dread got to me when I imagined that my life achievement would be solving some obscure theorem (if I was lucky). Searching for meaning, I ended up in philosophy (eg. empiricism and epistemology) and social sciences (eg. game theory) classes in university. Searching for utility, I ended up working for a healthcare analytics startup as a Data Scientist/ Machine Learning Specialist.

I wanted to study something that had some use and also helped us understand ourselves/society better. I discovered cognitive science which asks the questions that were concrete with rigorous methods. I discovered the cognitive science society and the society for mathematical psychology, where I saw how computational methods were being developed to understand how our mind works.

I started my PhD with Jennifer Trueblood at Vanderbilt University and later moved with Indiana University. I was particularly inspired with the sophisticated mathematics that was being used to answer useful questions and further our basic understanding. This is use inspired basic research.

Most of my work is in medical decision making. I have also studied decisions ranging from multi-attribute choice, consumer decisions and social media decisions. In my research I have used statistical methods, approximate Bayesian inference, evidence accumulation models and machine learning (deep learning) models. I have presented my work at the Workshops at NeurIPS, Cognitive Science Society, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Mathematical Psychology and Psychonomic Society and hung out at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

While I have managed to focus my professional interests well enough to produce coherent research directions, my personal hobbies are constantly evolving. These range from windsurfing, karate, theater and music.

Since I can only chase a handful of projects myself, I vicariously experience the research routes that I could not do myself through conversations. Please email me if you'd like to chat!