Touching a million lives

“I come from a village where hardly anyone knows what an IIT or a PhD degree is. However I was privileged to have parents who pushed me for education. Unlike my peers, who clearly understood how the degree aligned with their life goals, I started my absolutely clueless PhD journey at the young age of 19. My curiosities led me to collaborate with some prominent researchers across the globe. During one such endeavour, a senior researcher told me that they could only recall a handful of publications out of the hundreds they authored. It was a turning point in how I perceived academic research and a piece of invaluable advice in the rat race of ‘publish or perish.’ What good are the citations if one cannot even find most of their own research work worthy!

Initially, I strongly believed that technology could solve most of the world’s problems, but my lived experiences and exposure have taught me otherwise. With an incredibly supportive supervisor, I started exploring sustainable development interventions and processes away from technological breakthroughs. But I still felt that my efforts were not bringing any real difference to the community back home, which faced developmental challenges from unemployment and water shortage to lack of…