WHERE DID YOU GROW UP? WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO CAL? I was born in Bangalore, India. After I say that, people immediately assume I moved here when I was very little, because I don't have the faintest Indian accent. This isn't true. I lived there, grew up there, went to high school there, and then finally came to America as a college freshman at MIT. I went into MIT indending to be a physics major - and I was, till junior year when I realized I wanted to solve *actual* poblems and not made-up imaginary ones about wavefunctions. So I finished up my Physics major and switched to EECS where I spent the next two years hating my Electrical Engineering classes and loving my Computer Science classes, especially the ones about Artificial Intelligence. That's how I ended up in the CS PhD program at Cal - I'm starting in the Natural Language Processing group working on Machine Translation. HOW MUCH PROGRAMMING HAVE YOU DONE (& WHAT LANGUAGES)? I've been programming for three years now. I started out in scheme, then learned python, C++ and Java. WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES? I love to hike. Now that we live in NorCal, my husband and I take trips almost every weekend to explore the coastline, mountains, forests, and yes, even deserts that this area is just bursting with. I also like working out, cooking, mostly baking though, and I enjoy learning to play the guitar but I haven't had much time for that recently. On the weekends I like to go up to the city to meet people or shop. My two favorite magazines are Vogue and Technology Review, and I can't quite decide whether Scrubs or 30 Rock is my favorite TV show. WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR TALENTS AND SKILLS? Hmm... I can draw ok, I used to do it a lot in high school but not so much any more. At one point in my life I was also very good at drama and elocution - that is actually why I have an American accent. I got rid of my native Indian accent all the way back in high school and adopted the American one when I heard (and liked) what you people sounded like. HAVE YOU DONE ANYTHING REMARKABLE? HAS ANYTHING MEMORABLE HAPPENED TO YOU? I'm married, that was pretty awesome. Other than that, I once went bungy jumping in New Zealand, but I was too scared to jump, so I got pushed off. That was terrifying for about 3 seconds while I was falling through the air, but after that it was ridiculously fun. I also went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef which looks just like it does in all the pictures - beautiful, and really really really big. WHAT COMMITMENTS WILL BE CONSUMING YOUR CYCLES THIS SEMESTER? I'm a first year grad student, so I have to learn stuff - I'm taking CS281A, which is Statistical Learning theory, and CS288, which is Statistical Natural Language processing. Because I'm a GSI, I also have to take CS301, which is a class about teaching. I'm also trying to learn something about Machine Translation so I'm working with the people in the Natural Language Processing group in the CS department, doing some experiments and getting involved.