All About Me

The Journey

Once upon a time...

Born and raised in a village near world heritage site Khajuraho, I am the eldest among my siblings. I grew up in village environment with trees, rivers, jungles, crop fields and surrounded by nature with little modern amenities. This was the most valuable and rich time in my life which taught me connect, compassion, and zeal to struggle. The city of Khajuraho is a historical place with dozens of magnificent temples built around 1000 CE. It is also close to Panna Tiger Reserve, Ranneh Falls and Ken River canyon made of pure crystalline granite. Climate of the city remains pretty hot with recorded high temperature 120 F and as low as 33 F for short period of time in a year. Later, I kept visiting my village for one month in winter and couple of months in summer every year. During all these vacations, I volunteered to teach in the village schools and free private tuitions to the students in village.

An ancient temple at Khajuraho

Graduation ceremony at IITB

Integrated B.S. - M.S. from IIT Bombay

I received primary education from a small village school and was later selected for free boarding school known as Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya (JNV) up to 12th grade. During my final years at JNV, I was invited multiple times to cover Biology for 10th grade when the school was still searching for a teacher for an year. Then I moved to Mumbai for higher education in science. I pursued integrated B.S.-M.S. in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). During five years of integrated degree, I got multiple opportunities to volunteer for teaching underprivileged children who din't have access to schools. After my graduation, I worked as a project research assistant at department of Mechanical Engineering at IITB for a year during 2017-18.

PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from UAB

Recently I graduated with a PhD from Department of Chemistry, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) in the United States of America. My PhD research focused on medicinal chemistry, where I designed, synthesized and evaluated small molecules for their anticariogenic properties. This experience gave me expertise in computational and experimental high throughput drug screening, synthesis and purification of small molecules, microbiological assays and handling cancer cells. Along with my research responsibilities, I had been a graduate teaching assistant for general chemistry and introductory chemistry lab courses at department of chemistry, UAB. Teaching chemistry has been an absolute pleasure over past five years. In these five years, I have developed and refined my teaching techniques and learned insight about students' psychology which proves useful while devising my teaching philosophy. My goal is to keep improving myself and develop as a passionate educator along with being an excellent researcher and hope to contribute to the human society with my interests, skills and hard work.

Currently, I am an Instructional Laboratory Coordinator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Along with that I work as a Medicinal Chemist at Cerflux Inc. My research at Cerflux is focused on high throughput screening of potential cancer drugs for their efficacy against colorectal cancer.