Author, Physician, Engineer
I am an only child of parents that immigrated to the United States from South India in 1965. I earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from M.I.T. (‘88) and worked in the Aerospace and Defense Industries for six years. In the spring of 1992 I participated in a research expedition to the polar ice cap funded by the Office of Naval Research. That experience at the “top of the world” completely changed my life. I was no longer willing to participate in any effort that wasn’t directed to the alleviation of suffering on this planet.
I received my medical education at Baylor College of Medicine (‘98) and training in Anesthesiology at The University of Pennsylvania (‘02). I became a Diplomate of the American Board of Anesthesiology in 2003 and have been in clinical practice since 2002.
Closely observing thousands of patients under Anesthesia led me to ask fundamental questions around ideas that have gone unchallenged for a very long time: What does it mean to be awake? Does awareness require a functioning body or does it arise of its own? I was astounded to realize that our understanding of who we are as conscious beings is based on assumptions that can easily be overturned if we are willing to examine them openly. It turns out that unchallenged assumptions underpin our understanding of much of the world outside of the Operating Room as well. It is a matter of how closely we are willing to look…