Nikhil:
This is amazing! In the last two minutes, I could re-live the life of a researcher in the perspective of you, as well as me. While I had a more traditional pathway of Bachelor’s, Master’s and PhD, yours is more exciting as a life, doing Bachelor’s, job, PhD, now doing more clinical, like there are various turns here and there. This is what a researcher’s life is.
And now currently, you’re collaborating with multiple people- clinicians, doctors, academicians, institutes. And also, you do a lot of volunteering at the IEEE, which we’ll talk about it later.
Aishwarya:
Certainly.
Nikhil:
So, really, it is quite impressive and I’m sure that our listeners all across the world will be definitely motivated and piqued to pursue their dreams.
As everyone has a turning point in their lives – what to decide, like when to decide, and way to decide, that they have to do and want to do or not, and what career path they want to take. At what point you decided to take on the scientific pursuit? Was it during the Infosys or you just tested out to think of ‘let’s try that PhD’?
Aishwarya:
Yeah, I think that’s an excellent question really. Always makes us look back at our journey, and hindsight is 20-20. And it’s interesting to think about what went on in our minds and what are the experiences which shaped us, which led to where we are, each of us, as scientists. For me, like I mentioned, it started off as curiosity, looking at my cousin’s sister, and also, you know, and other scientists in lab coats, as I mentioned. That’s something probably I want to try out, maybe want to be one of them someday.
So, I did not have any training or sneak peek into research while I was in India, and my experiences in NUS is what has, you know, been all my research journey. When I took on a Master’s in NUS to try out what research is, and if, you know, if I was cut out to be a researcher. And fortunately, for me, the people around me were really encouraging in that, you know…
I think that is very important when you’re starting off with something, that initial push and motivation to go along and I was lucky to have that in great mentors, and a very nice team of buddies around me, and Nikhil would agree with that, I’m sure. And all these experiences led to me embracing the possibilities that I could pursue my further fascination in biomedical engineering as a career and research as a career. And I guess that led on to me realizing my passion in the intersection of technology and medicine. And I think for me it was also important to try out different things. Like I mentioned, I have worked in the Pure Bench side with animal models. I have also had a chance to work with clinical technology, and I found that I enjoy working with people from multidisciplinary backgrounds and knitting all these different skill sets together to advance technology.
Nikhil:
That is amazing to hear, like pursuing science, as when you joined during a master’s and then converting into PhD. I’m sure many people would agree with that.
Pragya:
Indeed, it takes a lot of courage and mental strength to take such a big leap from being an engineer and then transitioning into a researcher. So like there was a drastic change in the field matrix, like a then engineer, now into biomedicine. So looking back last few years, do you miss being a software engineer or do you like your role more as a biomedical scientist?
