TL;DR: You can skip straight to my CV here.

Storytime

Hi again! Here’s a short background about myself and my journey from polymer science through numerics and into data science.

I am originally from Pothanicad, a small village in southern India but I grew up in an industrial town overlooking oil tanks - Ambalamukal - and went to Cochin Refineries School. I joined the College of Engineering in Munnar to study Computer Science, but due to personal reasons, I discontinued and joined Cochin University (CUSAT) for their Polymer Science program. In 2013, together with a few colleagues, I co-founded a branding startup – brandkaro.

In 2015, I relocated to Germany to attend the University of Freiburg to do a joint-master in Polymer Science. Through my master thesis performed at Théorie et Simulation des Polymères group of Institut Charles Sadron (CNRS Alsace), I was exposed to the field of numerical analysis and soft matter theory. I secured doctoral thesis funding from the University of Strasbourg, France to continue in this domain under the guidance of Dr Joachim Wittmer. For my doctoral thesis, I numerically evaluated dynamic properties of freestanding polymer films and characterized ensemble fluctuations of variables that contribute to them (it’s complicated, ask me in person).

During my PhD, a side project helping a friend track Janus particles in microscopy videos introduced me to computer vision. Around the same time, Katie Bouman’s talk on blackhole imaging and inverse problems captured my imagination. Together, they sparked my curiosity about data-driven problem-solving and ultimately steered me toward data science.