Bala grew up mostly in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh, where he did his schooling. He then joined IIT Madras for a B.Tech in Engineering Physics, following which he joined University of Maryland, College Park, USA for a PhD in Physics. After an initial stint in theoretical particle physics, he switched fields to pursue experimental quantum computation -- particularly superconducting circuits for quantum information processing. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Dr. Ben S. Palmer and Prof. Fred C. Wellstood, was titled "Transmon qubits coupled to superconducting lumped element resonators".  Bala later moved to Prof. Per Delsing's Quantum Device Physics group in Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden in the Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience. There he worked on the emerging field of Quantum Acoustics with superconducting circuits.  

He is deeply interested in all aspects of Quantum Physics - Foundations, Computation, Simulation, Communication. 

Apart from Physics, Bala is a keen practitioner of Music, Vedanta, Sanskrit, Mathematics, Chess and Tennis. Bala also speaks seven different languages with good fluency and looks to learn newer languages at every opportunity. 

Email: SURIB (at) IISC (dot) AC (dot) IN