Research
Adaptive entities such as animals can occupy different behavioural states. At a fundamental level, behaviour is a sequence of bouts of these states, each lasting some duration. What algorithms do animals use to generate these behaviour sequences? Do they account for environmental changes, and their own internal states? Are the chosen behavioral sequences optimal in some way? How do these algorithms allow individuals to work together to generate groups and societies? How do individuals coordinate their behaviour sequences within groups? These questions excite me tremendously.
During my PhD, I am looking at the behavioural sequences of three social species to try to make initial predictions about behavioural algorithms. I am also modelling the formation of groups of social animals to explain the wildly different patterns of group cohesion observed in such species. Finally, I am looking at how particular behaviours are coordinated, and how complex behavioural interactions can be identified.
Career
I am a PhD researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, and a member of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Quantitative Behaviour, Ecology, and Evolution.
My Master's and Bachelor's degrees in Biology were awarded in 2020 by the Indian Institute of Science. All my pre-PhD research was in collective behaviour and animal movement, carried out in affiliation with various groups at the Centre for Ecological Sciences.
Commitments
I am committed to free, open, and replicable science in a supportive academic system. As such, I follow these self-imposed commandments in my research:
- All code used in my research will always be publicly available with my papers.
- As far as I can help it, my code will only use free and open source dependencies.
- I will strive to write readable code that will run on ordinary computers.
- My code will always be reviewed by another person before submission of papers.
- Every paper I publish will first be available as a pre-print, as far as possible.
- I will commit to equal opportunities and equitable support in big and small circumstances.
- I commit to representing my mentees and 'having their backs' whenever they need me.
- To the extent possible, I will ensure that my science is self-communicating to the public.
Other interests
I am extremely in reading really old classic books and papers in various fields, to get a picture of science and society decades (or sometimes centuries) ago. I also write fiction and poetry, create useful and interesting bits of code, cool visualisations, and a lot of satire.
Funding
I am currently supported by the DAAD Graduate Student Scholarship Programme.
Formerly, I am grateful to have been a fellow of the Indian Government's Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana,
which gave me financial freedom at a very early age.
I strongly recommend applying to this scholarhip if you're an Indian highschooler.
The Indian Government has recently closed this fellowship in what can only be described, in polite terms, as a puzzling move.
I stand by the thousands of former awardees of this fellowship who have excoriated this decision.
