My journey in Robotics began in my early childhood even before I actually knew it. I used to pull apart electronics at home, was fascinated with circuits and electronic components and always wondered if they had use beyond our household appliances. While I was growing up in India, I was exposed to two technical fields: Nanotechnology and Robotics.

But, there was no direct connection between the circuits I had held in my hand to Robots as we knew it early on- The Terminator. So, I went on to do a deep dive into Electronics. This was the start of my journey abroad with a Bachelors in Engineering in Electronics and Communication from the University of Hong Kong.

As my 1st time abroad, that too for a commitment spanning years at end, this was a tough call but one that I cherish till date. I got learn the whole behind the scenes of how to build circuits, how to prepare bill of materials (BOM), how to source components, soldering, PCB etching, the works. But, the problem still remained- I was learning all this disjoint from my hunger to see the circuit in action on a robot.

So, I found an applied Masters program with a specialization in robotics. This is how among multiple offers, I finally picked the top ranked Masters of Science in Artificial Intelligence with Intelligence Robotics specialization at the University of Edinburgh. I learned deep practical insights about robot perception, navigation, reinforcement learning, computer vision and also got to build my 1st robot from a lego kit. We even participated in a maze solving competition. Additionally, I also did my Master thesis on an industrial robot Baxter aimed at assisting with electronic waste recycling.

This is where my curiosity piqued. I know had a sense of the theory and got to apply it on a robot too but I did not yet have the chance to build a robot from the ground up. This was an opportunity I got when I was offered a fully funded PhD at JAIST, Japan. My advisor gave me the freedom to build and deploy my own robots from commercial off the shelf (COTS) components and we even managed to get Journals published with the results obtained.

I finally graduated with a PhD in Robotics, defended my thesis and the very next day assumed the position of Postdoc research fellow in Finland. There I got exposure to mentoring early stage PhD scholars, even BSc and MSc thesis scholars, independently lead our contributions for a large consortium project with multiple partners and wrote grants to lead projects as a Principal Investigator (PI).

I continued this journey all the way to the United States of America where I had the opportunity to write grants for various Federal and Scientific agencies and continued to mentor scholars.