About me

I like to observe wildlife and I love to talk about them.
I use AI to observe behavior of insects, birds and mammals. I write short stories and make illustrations to promote about my work.

My early life,

I am from Mumbai, India but now I live and work in Konstanz, Germany since 2017. I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB) and an active research member of the Center of Advanced Studies of Collective Behavior (CASCB) at the University of Konstanz. I am also an art fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany.

My professional life as an engineer, computer scientist and now a biologist,

I am trained in biomedical engineering at the Mumbai University. I started working with Larsen & Toubro Ltd. as a software engineer in Mysore, India. After two years of job, I moved to Munich/Germany to pursue an MSc. in Biomedical Computing at the Technical University of Munich (until 2013). After completing my master's studies, I started my PhD (2013–2020) research on solving computer vision problems for the application of augmented reality(AR) and virtual reality(VR) for human and non-human.

Initially, the project was an industrial-academic collaboration with the Technical University of Munich with Prof. Nassir Navab in cooperation with Dr. Peter Keitler, one of the founders of Extend3D GmbH. I designed computer vision algorithms to track 3D objects in industrial scenarios. The project took a different direction in 2017 after I initiated a new collaboration with Prof. Iain Couzin at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior. The project involved solving problems of 3D tracking for studying animal behavior. I learned that movement trajectories are used widely for studying animal behavior. For the rest of my PhD research, I designed a 3D tracking setup for studying large groups of diverse animals (insects, birds, and mammals). The indoor arena is among the largest indoor spaces for studying animals with a multi-modal tracking approach.

I finished my PhD and won the LIG-CASCB grant offered by the Department of Ecology of Animal Societies at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and The Cluster of Collective Behavior Studies at the University of Konstanz. Since 2021, I have been developing software to study large groups of animals using aerial images (UAV). I use computer vision and machine learning to automate the extraction of biologically relevant data from videos. I am one of the lead researchers in the MELA project along with Dr. Vivek Hari Sridhar and Dr. Akanksha Rathore. Together we are studying a rare mating behavior lekking in Blackbucks (antelopes) in India. Besides this project, I continue to work on the 3D tracking problem with Pigeons and Siberian Jays in collaboration with Alex Chan, Fumihiro Kano, and Micheal Griesser. We continue to develope new datasets with pigeons and other species of birds.

Towards wildlife, science communication, and Art

In 2013, I started birdwatching as a hobby and this adventure ultimately motivated me to leave the field of industrial research and moved the focus of my PhD toward wildlife research. In addition to bird watching, I enjoy sketching, walking in the mountains, and napping under large trees with huge canopies. I collaborate with several art institutions and independent artists to find approaches to generate curiosity about wildlife and science through my art projects. I have been invited to give public talks at several venues and I have written pop-science articles on topics involving research on animal tracking at a global scale.

Recent art-science collaborations include projects with fellows of Akademie Schloss Solitude (2020–ongoing), courses with Merz Akademie (2020–2022), and mentoring a team at the Driving the Human event (2021–2022).

During the »field trip« at Akademie Schloss Solitude, I started the Encounters with the Wild project to share my experience of working with animals through stories. I intend to combine storytelling with audio or visual media and produce a series of short stories based on the daily life of animals at the Blackbuck National Park and Tal Chhapar Sanctuary in India. My residence is part of »Field Trip« – a new transdisciplinary residency program between Akademie Schloss Solitude and Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Konstanz.