I was born in Chennai in 1981. I did my schooling in DAV Boys Senior Secondary School, Chennai. I graduated from ICT (Institute of Chemical Technology; UDCT/UICT back then) in 2003, with a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Technology and joined IISc Bangalore in 2003, for a Master’s in Computational Science. In 2005, I successfully applied for an upgrade to the PhD programme, to pursue a PhD thesis in Systems Biology, with Dr. Nagasuma Chandra and Prof. Saraswathi Vishveshwara as my advisers. I submitted my PhD thesis in October 2008, and moved to the lab of Prof. Andreas Wagner, Department of Biochemistry, University of Zurich, for a postdoc. I finished my post-doctoral stint in March 2011 and returned to India, where I joined the Department of Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, as an Assistant Professor.
My father is a chartered accountant and my mother is a professor of commerce/accountancy. I married in 2007, and my wife, Madhurya, is a carnatic vocalist/violinist. Our son, Achyut, was born in 2010, and our daughter, Sriprada, was born in 2014.