Short Bio
I was born and brought up in Kanpur, an industrial town in India. It was there that I developed my first interests: Tennis and Mathematics. Tennis occupied the early part of my childhood, and mathematics occupied my early teens. It led me to do my undergraduate studies in Computer Science (with main interest in Theoretical Computer Science) from the Indian Insitute of Technology at Mumbai.
After completing my degree I came to US in Fall 99 to pursue a Ph.D in Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization at Georgia Tech. Since then I have developed many interests mostly related to arts: like films, music and paintings. I completed my Ph.D. in the summer of 2004.
Favorite Movies
- Woody Allen: Manhattan, Annie Hall, Bananas, Zelig, Play it again Sam, A Midsummer night's sex comedy, Hannah and her sisters.
- Ingmar Bergman: Wild Strawberries.
- Krzysztof Kieslowski : My favorite Director: Decalogue, Double life of Veronique, Blue, Red, White.
- Akira Kurosawa: Rashomon, Dreams, Dersu Uzala.
- Satyajit Ray: Aparjito, Apur Sansar, Pather Panchali, The Music Room, The Middleman.
- Andrei Tarkovsky: Stalker, Andrei Rublev, Solaris.
- Andy and Larry Wachowski: The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, The Animatrix, The Matrix Revolutions.
- Others: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg), Kolya (Jan Sverak), Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore), Children of Heaven (Majid Majidi), The Bicycle Thief (Vittorio de Sica), La Strada (Frederico Fellini), The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir), The 400 Blows (Francois Truffaut), My Life to Live (Godard), Leaving Las Vegas (Mike Figgis), Fight Club (David Fincher), The Godfather I-III (Francis Ford Coppola), Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford), The Shawshank Redemption (Frank Darabont), One Flew over Cuckoo's Nest (Milos Forman), The English Patient (Anthony Minghella), The Last Emperor (Bernardo Bertolucci), Last Tango in Paris (Bernardo Bertolucci), To Kill a MockingBird (Robert Mulligan), The Sound of Music (Robert Wise), Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick), Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino), Memento (Christopher Nolan), The Usual Suspects (Bryan Singer), Mulholland Dr. (David Lynch), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle), Silence of the lambs (Jonathan Demme).