Engineering and Science Related Experiences
For a quick look into what I like learning about :)
For a summary of some of my older projects/work, click here.
I'm really excited on working on improving Ayurvedic clinical trials. More on this to come :)))
Under Prof Laura Kim at UCLA, the first two quarters of this year, I designed and improved optical setups to characterize quantum emitters and hBN.
The goal was to make everything work in order to detect ODMR (optically detected magnetic resonance) as a method of quantum sensing.
January winterbreak sidequest I want to return to - a simple game on Unity: sanskriti-ss.github.io/puzzles/
Under Prof. Ashish Mahabal at Caltech, I've been conducting research using the BacDive database
to determine resistance and sensitivity trends across different strains, species, and genera of bacteria in order to identify potential developing threats,
using machine learning methods.
During the summer, I also spent a week at IIT Bombay at the Statistical Machine Learning Summer Program,
which nicely supplemented the coursework I had done during university classes with a more math-focused approach.
Learning about new things is one of my favourite things to do - and that's what I indulged myself in this summer.
This started with going to Texas for the Forbidden Courses (one focused on Evolutionary Biology),
where Professor Maroja led us on fascinating ways human subpopulations evolved due to their environemnts.
I headed to U Minnesota after, where I attended the Quantum+Chips summer program, learning about the newest advancements in the Quantum Chips industry though lab tours,
company visits, and talks by leaders in industry and academia.
Professor Henry Lee, who I met through QIntern, gave me the opportunity to join him and a team of graduate/undergraduate students in investigating the phenomenon behind the irregular behvaiour of E.coli at microaeration conditions.
As a final treat before I headed back to university, I attended Raadfest - a longevity conference. The advancements in the anti-aging field are so much more than I ever imagined -
but the biggest takeaway of all was that high-quality, regular sleep is one of the best things you can do for yourself.
VLPs and CRISPR are quite interesting tools in their own right - but how can we, and how have we, used VLPs to improve the delivery of CRISPR? That's the question I started looking into in Summer 2022. Take a look at our lit review.
As part of the Build Team at The Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES), I built a pulse oximeter (from scratch) with a team of four in order to learn more about circuitry, design, and code in a hands-on manner.
Think about how cool that is: you can determine your blood oxygen levels and pulse from nothing more than the tools you get in a basic Arduino kit.
This also inspired me to take UCLA's E96 Bionics class - where I put the skills to the test to build a slider/pressure-controlled robotic arm :)
Through 3D Pharmaceuticals at UCLA, I also got my first hands-on experience designing drugs - specifically how the shape and composition of the hydrogel and gelatin pill can be modified to control release rates.
My background
Systems have always fascinated me - from the signalling pathways within our body and how they integrate, to how economic models can be used to predict impacts of policy. Being involved with a wide range of areas for the last decade played a key role in developing my love for approaching challenges from creative perspectives. While I've focused on bioengineering for the last couple of years (both within and outside the scope of academics), I dedicate part of myself to learning about what fascinates me - from taking a pharmaceutical design lab class to classes on Quantum Biology, Monetary and Financial Architectures, to Bionics.
