Thanks for visiting my web page. Here you can find links to my papers, talks and descriptions of my research projects and interests. Following is a brief bio sketch.

I was born in Madurai, India and raised in the coastal city of Madras, where I completed my schooling.

My academic journey has not followed a traditional linear trajectory. I graduated with distinction in Chemical engineering from BITS Pilani (Pilani campus) in 2009. I accepted a job offer from Dr. Reddy’s Labs (DRL) a research-driven Indian pharmaceutical company in Hyderabad, India. In the three years I spent at DRL, I worked alongside synthetic chemists and other chemical engineers on the design, development and scale-up of small molecule drugs. I contributed to two patents and was responsible for the commercial launch of three drugs. I also conducted exploratory research on continuous active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing and process analytical technology. I became more resourceful and resilient as a scientist as a result of designing processes that had to work not just in the fume hood, but also at the production plant. Though I relished the challenges unique to industrial research, I couldn’t envision a career in industry and felt a calling to teaching and academic research. I applied for a PhD in chemical engineering, and was fortunate to be accepted by the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2012.

At Michigan, I chose to work with Prof. Joerg Lahann. Joerg leads a group that implements niche macromolecular engineering tools, mainly electrohydrodynamic (EHD) co-jetting and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) polymerization, to develop programmable materials that are routinely deployed at the forefront of translational biomedical research, especially in targeted drug delivery and tissue engineering. During my PhD I developed a model-derived approach for the design and synthesis of biomimetic polymer brushes with the ultimate goal of tailoring the interactions between synthetic materials and stem cells, macrophages, biomolecules and viruses. My multifunctional platform combined paryelene copolymers, zwitterionic and carbohydrate polymer brushes, and bioconjugation techniques to solve diverse problems at the interface of biology and polymers. You can read more about my doctoral research here. I was fortunate to be awarded the Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship through a university-level competition, which allowed me to chart an independent and ambitious course of research in my final year. I have also received a Procter & Gamble Team Innovation Award, the Towner Prize for Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor and several poster prizes. Research apart, I have a deep interest in teaching and mentoring. I served as an instructor for one semester, as a teaching consultant for two years and have mentored five talented undergraduate researchers during my PhD.

Starting July 2018, I will join Prof. Theresa Reineke’s lab at the University of Minnesota as a post-doc. I will combine my experience in synthesizing carbohydrate and zwitterionic polymers with statistical modeling frameworks to accelerate the discovery and optimization of polymeric vehicles for gene editing.

I make the best of time away from research by reading, running and cheering on my favorite cricket teams (South Africa and New Zealand). I love literary fiction and would readily be stranded on an island with the complete works of Edith Wharton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence, Jane Austen and Henry James. Like most of my countrymen, I am an ardent armchair cricket critic and a hopeless tennis-ball cricketer. When I’m not in lab, you can find me training for a road race, trying to do better than the seven half-marathons I’ve run so far.