Chennai, India

I am from Chennai (known earlier as Madras), the capital of the state called Tamil Nadu, in southern India. I enjoyed my years in Chennai, a very sober city, with a very interesting cultural heritage. It is now one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas, with a rapidly growing automotive industry, and ofcourse, IT and BPO industry. 

My graduation and post-graduation was in statistics at Loyola College, Chennai. This is an autonomous institution under the University of Madras.  

Past Work Experiences 

Prior to joining the School of Computing to pursue my PhD, I worked at the Center for Financial Engineering as a Research Assistant. I have worked on risk management topics, including participating in a consultancy project with a local bank. I managed their early website, and experimented with an online system to cater to course registration, and grade management (I developed it using asp and an MS Access database). Some of them used the distribution of grades from past student batches to pick optional courses! Not the recommended way to select courses to study, ofcourse! ;) (1998- 2000) 

After my Masters at Loyola College, Chennai, I joined Telco, an automobile giant in India (Now called Tata Motors). Telco hires people to train in their organization, and pretty much spend a long time with them in their long management hierarchy. I spent couple of years there in a remote town in northern India, shifting from department to department for all-round experience.  I wrote some reports, and idled my time otherwise. 

Despite running from department to department, I pretty much had nothing to do, and finally while in the Bill of Materials department, I experimented with MS Access and created a first time system that managed design changes and follow-ups. Some welcomed the use of computers, some hated me for changing their lives ;) I suggested that the system be replicated in their networked ERP system (because monitoring design changes involves many departments), but it wasn't done while I was there. I doubt if sufficient momentum had been picked up to pursue it in the organization.

While I had some fun at work, the town was a bore. (1996-1997)