I was born and raised in Hyderabad India, a city with a rich past and an exciting future. My undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering was at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, India’s multicultural cosmopolis. Of the many lessons I learned at IIT-Bombay, the one that has stuck with me is that rules can be questioned and limits pushed.
I moved to the US to do a Masters in Electrical Engineering at Virginia Tech, where I worked on fiber optic communication systems. I changed fields for my doctorate in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where my doctoral thesis focused on how systems models can be used to reconcile uncertainties in climate policy.
Today I am a Professor at the University of British Columbia, jointly appointed in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) and the School of Public Policy. Along the way, I have been a research fellow at Harvard, on the faculty at CMU, and ran a California-based internet startup.
While my early work focused primarily on the science-policy nexus for climate change, my current work can be divided into three (partially overlapping) domains: air quality, development and health; climate science and development; risk and regulation of emerging nano and biotechnologies.
On the personal front, I am a ‘cricket tragic’. You will either understand and empathize or you will shake your head in puzzlement.