About

I was born into a farming family in a tiny village in West Bengal, India. In those days, for a boy like me, education was not a given—it was a choice I had to fight for. At 16, I left my home and moved to the town to find better schooling, moving from city to city to keep my dream alive. Every step of my education, especially Bachelor of Science at University of Burdwan, Master’s at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad and my PhD at IISER Kolkata, was fueled by scholarships and fellowships. Eventually, I took the biggest leap of my life: my first international trip, which brought me to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a postdoctoral researcher in the Manthiram Lab.

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However, my village remains the heart of my ambition. Seeing the challenges of rural life firsthand is what drives my desire to become a professor. I want to build a "high-thinking" education culture in my locality and inspire children like me to realize that with hard work and a bit of a dream, the world’s best laboratories are within their reach. I believe that science is the ultimate tool for social mobility and empowerment.

When I am not in the labratory, I enjoy tending to a small balcony garden filled with street flower plants—hardy flowers that, much like me, learned to grow with very little care. My ultimate dream is to spend my days doing the science I love in a high-thinking laboratory and my evenings coming home to my family and a couple of friendly Labradors waiting at the door. I believe that a life dedicated to the highest level of research is best balanced by the simple joys of home and nature.