Personal

Bio

I was born in Chennai in 1981. I did my schooling in DAV Boys Senior Secondary School, Chennai. I graduated from ICT (Institute of Chemical Technology; UDCT/UICT back then) in 2003, with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Technology and joined IISc Bangalore in 2003, for a Master’s in Computational Science. In 2005, I successfully applied for an upgrade to the PhD programme, to pursue a PhD thesis in Systems Biology, with Dr. Nagasuma Chandra and Prof. Saraswathi Vishveshwara as my advisers. I submitted my PhD thesis in October 2008, and moved to the lab of Prof. Andreas Wagner, Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, for a postdoc. I finished my post-doctoral stint in March 2011 and returned to India, where I joined the Department of Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, as an Assistant Professor.

My father is a chartered accountant and my mother is a professor of commerce/accountancy. I married in 2007, and my wife, Madhurya, is a carnatic vocalist/violinist. Our son, Achyut, was born in 2010, and our daughter, Sriprada, was born in 2014.

Other Interests

  • With my namesake, high-school friend and an extraordinary entrepreneur, Karthik Narayanan, I run a non-profit SethuBandhanam
  • Reading: Goodreads – more writing than reading in the recent past, esp. with no flight travel 🙂

Hobbies

  • I put in sporadic efforts toward improving my knowledge of संस्कृतम् (Samskrtam/”Sanskrit”).
  • Computational Linguistics for Sanskrit – a project I haven’t had the time to get around to!
  • I also like creating high quality typeset Sanskrit/multi-lipi documents: http://stotrasamhita.github.io/
  • Astronomical calculations (Panchanga) for determining the celebration of various festivals: jyotisha/panchangam @ GitHub
  • I am quite interested in digitising (and carefully proof-reading) works in Sanskrit; see http://stotrasamhita.net/
  • I am an avid listener of Carnatic music; I also like singing.
  • I am a huge fan of cricket—test cricket > ODI >> T20I~= IPL

Blogs etc.

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