I am 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), working under the guidance of Prof. Amit Tandon. I primarily study the upper ocean processes, its evolution and its implications on air-sea interaction at smaller length and time scales, in order to understand how these processes are an important source of feedback on larger scale oceanic and atmospheric processes. 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, larger scale ocean circulation and atmosphere processes like the Indian Summer Monsoons. 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. My deep love for mathematics and physics inspired me to major in mechanical engineering during my undergraduate at Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar and learn about core concepts like fluid dynamics, thermodynamics, heat transfer etc. During the same time, I stumbled upon the course “Introduction to Ocean Dynamics”, followed by “Fundamentals of Weather and Climate” during my time as an undergrad student at IIT Bhubaneswar. 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.

If you are interested to know more about this journey, the following article will be an interesting read.