About Me

I am a PhD Candidate in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, where I conduct research as part of the Patel Group at the Penn Institute for Computational Science. As a computational scientist, I am driven by a passion for solving complex problems in biology and chemistry using a blend of physics-informed and data-driven techniques. In addition to my academic pursuits, I am also an entrepreneur and pro-bono consultant with experience in commercializing technology and solving business problems in the biotech industry. My ultimate goal is to leverage my experiences to bridge the gap between science and business and drive innovation in the biotech industry.


Research

My graduate research centers on characterizing the role of hydration in the conformational transitions of proteins, peptides, and polymers through the use of specialized molecular simulation approaches. This has myriad applications ranging from plastic separation to drug discovery. My research leverages the power of massively parallel computer simulations, enhanced sampling techniques, and statistical mechanics to answer challenging questions. A large part of my work involves writing scientific software to generate and analyze large volumes of data. I have used this as an opportunity to learn and apply several software engineering best practices.


Entrepreneurship and Consulting

I aspire to use my scientific expertise and problem-solving skills to help translate novel innovations from the lab to the market. Currently, I am spearheading the development of an entrepreneurial venture to commercialize technology for biologics optimization developed in my research group at Penn. To build this venture, I played a pivotal role in securing a competitive $55,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, which enabled us to conduct customer discovery. My team completed the NSF I-Corps accelerator program in 2023, where we interviewed over 100 potential customers, partners, and stakeholders across the biotech and biopharma industries to identify our beachhead market, develop a business model canvas, map our customer ecosystem, and achieve product-market fit. Prior to this, we completed the Penn I-Corps program in 2022, which helped us confirm our technology's commercial potential and gain a preliminary understanding of customer needs.

Apart from my entrepreneurial engagements, I am also working on pro-bono consulting projects through the Penn Biotech Group. These projects involve working with clients in the healthcare industry to solve diverse business problems in the life sciences sector.


Educational Background

Prior to joining the PhD program in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Penn, I graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar in 2019, majoring in Chemical Engineering and minoring in Computer Science and Engineering.

As an undergraduate, I worked in computational research labs at Caltech, JAIST, and IIT Gandhinagar on interdisciplinary problems in applied physics, materials science, chemistry, and computer science. I was also a competitive programmer, and was selected to represent IIT Gandhinagar at the ACM-ICPC Regionals in 2017.