I am an assistant professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department at New York University (NYU), where my research focuses on developing advanced decision-support tools for planning and operating resilient, low-carbon energy systems as well as design and integration of novel energy technologies. Prior to joining NYU in January 2024, I was a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Energy Initiative , where I kick-started my academic research career, after spending nearly 5 years working in the energy industry working on a range of sustainability-focused research topics. At MIT, I successfully pursued research in these topics with over $4 million in cumulative research funding, successfully graduating several masters students and mentoring multiple postdoctoral associates, and establishing collaboration with >10 principal investigators across MIT and other institutions (see Team page for more details). For example, I co-led the systems modeling effort for the Future of Energy Storage study, an interdisciplinary MIT project exploring the role for storage in future low-carbon grids.
My outreach activities include serving as a member of the Massachusetts State commission on Clean Heat that advised the State on decarbonization of the building sector as well as an advisor for the Open Energy Outlook project, a multi-institution effort to create open-source macro-energy systems models and data sets for the United States
I am the co-developer of GenX model, an open-source electricity system capacity expansion model as well as DOLPHYN, an open-source energy system model to support multi-vector infrastructure planning for the energy transition and accelerating technology development.
I received my M.S. and Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and a B.Tech. in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. As someone born in the Global South but having benefited immensely from the privileges of the Global North, I am particularly interested in the role for technology and policy in tackling the BOTH energy access and climate mitigation in just and cost-effective manner.
Outside of work, my primary interests are family, cricket and cooking, in that order.