My story
I was born in San Jose, California, and moved to India with my family when I was six. I grew up in Bangalore and Mysore, playing basketball, table tennis and cricket, and taking computers apart to see how they worked.
My first job was at Juniper Networks, testing JUNOS in Bangalore and later in Sunnyvale. It taught me to respect detail: systems tend to fail exactly where nobody thought to look.
In 2012 I stepped away from engineering to practise wet plate collodion, a 19th-century photographic process in which every image is poured, exposed and developed by hand within minutes. That year became Lapses in Time, a documentary we filmed in Hampi that went on to screen at film festivals. Slowness turned out to be a good teacher.
Then came a Master’s at UC Davis and Berlin, a city I had first fallen for in 2012. I earned my doctorate in computer security summa cum laude, and three of my papers received Best Paper Awards.
Along the way I learned how easily work crowds out life. That led me to study burnout and flow in security teams: why capable people break under pressure, and what helps them do their best work and still feel well. Which is why, from 2024 to 2025, I served on the Executive Steering Group of the Mental Health in CyberSecurity Foundation and led its research.
Seeing how AI is going to transform the way we work and live, I decided to co-found Silicon Psyche Labs with Giuseppe Canale.
Today I lead Silicon Psyche Labs as CEO, and I am a father of two. I am happiest outdoors, in nature.
