I am a sea-going oceanographer working as a PhD candidate at School for Marine Sciences and Technology at University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (UMassD). I am a Distinguished Doctoral Fellowship awardee from the University (2019-20,2021-2024) under the supervision of Prof. Amit Tandon. I primarily study upper ocean processes and air-sea interaction at smaller length and time scales, with the aim of understanding how these processes influence larger-scale oceanic and atmospheric systems. For my PhD dissertation, I focus on the Diurnal Warm Layers in the Bay of Bengal, which evolves over a day and has potential implications on small scale ocean mixing, daily atmospheric convection and larger scale atmosphere processes like the Indian Summer Monsoons using in-situ observations, remote sensing and 1-D and 3-D numerical ocean modeling. Additionally, I have a keen interest in hurricanes/tropical cyclones, and I was fortunate to study the role of small-scale processes in the recovery of a cold-wake due to cyclone Biparjoy in 2023. For more on my research, please see my research page. Prior to my graduate school experience here, I pursued my undergraduate in Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar, India, majoring in mechanical engineering.

Academic motivation

I spent my childhood in Visakhapatnam, a city located in the East Coast of India and thus I have always been curious about ocean dynamics, tropical cyclones, Indian summer monsoons and ocean-atmosphere exchanges. As a mechanical engineering undergraduate student and learning core concepts like advanced engineering math, fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, heat transfer etc, I stumbled upon the course “Introduction to Ocean Dynamics”. This was followed by “Fundamentals of Weather and Climate” which re-ignited my curiosity towards oceans and atmosphere. My fascination for such phenomenon coupled with a desire to make meaningful contributions to the society ensured that I first pursued a summer fellowship at Indian National Center for Ocean Information Services, Hyderabad, following which I applied for my current position as a PhD candidate in Tandon labs. After five years as a graduate student, including 97 days at sea, I remain as motivated as ever—if not more so—to continue contributing to this important field.

If you are interested to know more about this journey, the following article will be an interesting read. UMass Dartmouth also did a feature story which can be read here