In the year 2003, Kalpana Chawla went to space for the second time! To my then 7-year-old mind, space was a scary abyss, and going there would take a lot of courage. Unfortunately, as the space shuttle disintegrated on re-entry to Earth, we lost Chawla along with the other crew members. Chawla's story inspired me to be brave and look for the unknown. I had decided to go on a quest for the undiscovered and study Science. I wanted to communicate its beauty to as many people as possible. 

After school, I took the National Entrance Screening Test (NEST) and was among the top 150 out of the 80,000 students who took the exam that year. In the Center for Excellence in Basic Sciences (CEBS), I studied Chemistry for five years and earned my integrated BSc-MSc degree. After this, I moved to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces (MPIKG) in Germany to pursue my doctoral study, at the end of which I got my PhD (summa cum laude). I worked on questions related to the origin of life.  

After graduating, I joined the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Here, I study biomolecular interactions in cancer cells using super-resolution microscopic techniques.