I became interested in psychology and neuroscience when I participated in an international high-school neuroscience competition. Subsequently, I did my BA in Psychology from Mumbai and received a full scholarship by the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation to do my MSc at UCL in Developmental Psychology and Clinical Practice. Between 2020-2023, I worked in part-clinical, part-research roles, including being involved in an RCT to supervise lay facilitators, being a research coordinator for a policy project to update the national guidelines for disaster mental health in India as well as doing some teaching and supervision at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. 

As I engaged in clinical work, I encountered questions with hard-to-reach answers about the causes of mental health problems and the efficacy of therapies. Hence, I decided I want to contribute more significantly to the painstaking, yet rewarding, building of knowledge in the field of mental health and to build my career towards addressing mental health care and inequalities, at a societal/population - not just individual - level.

I am passionate about interdisciplinary mental health research and would like to effectively use quantitative and qualitative methods in concert to answer complex questions about the etiology and treatment of mental health problems. Hence, in my rotation year, I aim to advance my knowledge and skills of various quantitative methodological paradigms in mechanistic, population and intervention research, as that is something I have done less of previously.