I’m a scientist, an artist, a passionate home-cook, and an aspiring food writer currently based in New York. I was brought up in Northern California, home of the vast redwoods and Silicon Valley. I grew up painting, singing, writing, and eating delicious South-Asian meals. I live in the intersection of science and art—both deeply rooted in making sense of the world and sharing truth.

Passionate and curious about the material world around me, I studied chemical engineering at UC Santa Barbara and was deeply involved in the world of research, laboratory experimentation, problem-solving, and creation. While at UCSB, I was also involved in advocacy work focusing on womxn’s and LGBTQ+ rights.

I worked as a scientist and product developer at Clorox, formulating charcoal and wipes, but was inadvertently swept into the world of Food. While working on flavored wood briquets and interacting with various spice-houses, I slowly developed a keen interest in studying food beyond cooking. My first food-related passion project was authoring a cookbook for home-cooks within the Asian employee resource group at Clorox.

Pursuing my dream to further learn about food, I am currently studying Food Studies at NYU and working as a food research fellow at Bon Appétit and Epicurious magazines to develop my understanding of the food media world. My aspiration is to write a South Asian cookbook that aims to make South Asian cooking more accessible and centers independent indigenous cultures that span the subcontinent, rather than treating the cuisine as a monolith. My hope with this project is to further make sense of my heritage and ancestral cuisine, and explore a deeper connection between the science of cooking and the art of making a meal.