“The eye owes its existence to the light. Out of indifferent animal organs the light produces an organ to correspond to itself…”

J.W. von Goethe

My interests in studying the visual system started very early owing to simple curiosity to explore and understand how the eye functions and what causes dysfunction. Soon this interest extended to understanding the perception and cognition of visual information. I am fortunate to have inspiring teachers and mentors who spared no effort to promote my interest and inquisitiveness.

My introductory class in psychophysics was a revelation in itself. Like all stimulating lectures, while it answered many unresolved questions, it created a more and along with it a keen interest to pursue it. My Master’s work in applied color psychophysics, at the University of Waterloo under the supervision of Dr. Lakshminarayanan, was awarded the dean of science award for creativity. This created an industrial position at Christie digitals, Ontario – an eye opening experience as it taught me what I am not passionate about. Studying vision made me more curious about how the brain processes visual information. With a background rooted in Optometry and with an interest rooted in visual processing, I pursued my PhD in Developmental and Brain Sciences under the supervision of Dr. Blaser at the University of Massachusetts Boston. My thesis work aimed at understanding the time- course and along with it the necessary and sufficient conditions of short-term monocular deprivation effects in the adult visual system. Alongside my thesis I also worked on a project related to visual attention and spent a semester developing stimulus and analysis interface (using Matlab) for a  study investigating response selectivity of visuo-auditory cross-modal areas in adults using fNIRS. I am fluent with psychophysical methods, analysis of gaze, pupillometry, fNIRS data, statistical analysis, and matlab/Psychtoolbox.  I envision to be in academia and hope that I can guide youngsters who aspire to learn about and be in research. Do not hesitate to reach me if you need personal guidance – I set aside 2 hours every Sunday morning to interact with students.