Nov/Dec 2018

Educator Madhav V. Rajan brings years of expertise, and a spirit of adventure, to his role as dean of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Accidental

Journeys Administrative Successes Courtesy Chicago Booth

By MICHAEL GALLANT

November/December 2018

https://span.state.gov

V O LU M E L I X N U M B E R 6

CONTENTS

7





Courtesy Amit Tandon

Accidental Journeys, Administrative Successes Emotions and the Environment

24



Algorithms in Nature

26



Food for Thought

29



Communicating With Music



Monitoring the Monsoon

32



Poems and Performances

13



The Poet and the Pulitzer

34



Humane Human Resources

16



Deepwater Drones

36



Questioning Power

19



Hooked on HOOKED

38



Capturing Challenges

22



Taking Care/of Health

41



26

TEDx Manhattan/Courtesy Flickr

10

Editor in Chief Conrad W. Turner

Reviewing Editor Karl M. Adam

Editor Deepanjali Kakati Associate Editor Suparna Mukherji Hindi Editor Giriraj Agarwal Urdu Editor Syed Sulaiman Akhtar Copy Editors Bhawya Joshi, Shah Md. Tahsin Usmani

Art Director/ Production Chief Hemant Bhatnagar Deputy Art Directors / Production Assistants Qasim Raza, Shah Faisal Khan Editorial Assistant Justina Bosco

Courtesy Jehangir Mehta

A

s dean of The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Indian American academic Madhav V. Rajan guides the education of hundreds of young students, and shapes the future of an academic institution revered around the world.

It’s a pivotal role that the experienced educator clearly relishes, but one that, Rajan says, he never saw coming. “Even two years ago, I couldn’t have predicted I would have this job,” he says, with a hearty laugh, “and 10 years ago, I never would have even seen myself in academic administration at all!”

“But, there are very few jobs like

2

29

Courtesy Jacksonville Symphony

10

Inspired Flavors, International Perspective

41 Front cover: Collage by Hemant Bhatnagar  Articles with a star may be reprinted with permission.

Those without a star are copyrighted and may not be reprinted.Contact SPAN at 011-23472135 or editorspan@state.gov

Printed and published by Jeffrey R. Sexton on behalf of the Government of the United States of America and printed at Thomson Press India Ltd., 18/35 Delhi Mathura Road, Faridabad, Haryana 121007 and published at the Public Affairs Section, American Embassy, American Center, 24 K.G. Marg, New Delhi 110001.

Opinions expressed in this 44-page magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

it in the world,” he continues, “and it has been a truly amazing opportunity.”

To those unfamiliar with academic administration, Rajan likens his job to that of a corporate CEO. “When you’re the dean of a business school, in many ways, you’re the public face,” he says. “You are the person who is representative of the institution to its many, many constituents.” Much of Rajan’s work consists of connecting the school to the outside world, whether that means building relationships with alumni, raising money for new construction or initiatives, or helping to spread awareness about Chicago Booth’s efforts and accomplishments.

The rest of his work is internal. Rajan manages the school’s budget, programs and staff, among other responsibilities, and describes himself as a facilitator for amazing colleagues. “I enjoy putting talented people in jobs that allow them to make a difference and letting them run with it,” he says. “I’ve always been comfortable promoting people and empowering them to do things, taking care of what I can do well myself and delegating other tasks. That sort of approach has been very helpful to me.”

Rajan was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, and studied in both India and the United States, earning a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Madras, and an M.B.A. and a Ph.D. in business from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Even as a Ph.D. student, Rajan didn’t really consider a career in academia or administration, until it happened.

“I thought I would finish my degree and then figure out what I would do,” he says. “But, it

4 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Photographs courtesy Chicago Booth

Above: The Charles M. Harper Center, home to Chicago Booth’s fulltime M.B.A. and Ph.D. programs as well as academic research centers and institutes.

worked out that I got a job offer to be a faculty member at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which was a great opportunity.” Joining the faculty at the age of 24, Rajan would spend the next 12 years teaching accounting at Wharton, one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.

The next stop on his accelerating career journey was Stanford University in California,

“

Madhav V. Rajan (right) addresses the incoming full-time M.B.A. class at Chicago Booth in 2017.

I enjoy putting talented people in jobs that allow them to make a difference and letting them run with it.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

�

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 5

Photographs courtesy Chicago Booth

6 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

www.chicagobooth.edu

Stanford University www.stanford.edu

Go Online

where he received an offer to become a professor in 2001. Soon thereafter, he also became the head of the school’s accounting department and, after eight years of service, the senior associate dean for academic affairs, from 2010 to 2016. “Again, I had never thought about being in academic administration, but it sounded like something that I might enjoy,” he says. “It turned out to be a great role for me.”

For those interested in following a similar path, Rajan recommends treating the goal of academic administration as secondary to a solid foundation of academics itself. “The first step is to become established at a top school,” he says.

“Publish your work in leading journals and figure out how you want to do your teaching. If you’re the kind of person who’s curious about the world, you enjoy problem-solving and you want to look more deeply into fundamental issues, then it might be worth asking how you can have a broader impact in an administrative role, and not just in an academic one.”

For ambitious students of any discipline, Rajan advises diligence, hard work and a commitment to do one’s best, regardless of position or type of work.

“A lot of life is about meeting the right people and getting the right breaks,” he says, “and I’ve certainly been lucky to have that.

But, key in life is also understanding who you

The Wharton School

www.wharton.upenn.edu

are, what your strengths are and how to maximize those strengths.”

Most importantly, Rajan advises, simply strive to be authentic in whatever role or position you find yourself in. “You can’t try to be someone you’re not,” he says, “and as long as you understand yourself and are able to perform your role keeping that in mind, things will work out.”

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

Top: The Rothman Winter Garden inside Chicago Booth’s Charles M. Harper Center.

Above: Madhav V. Rajan speaks at the university’s Management Conference 2018.

and Emotions the Environment

Photographs courtesy Indiana University Bloomington

By NATASA MILAS

S

What are the biases that shape people’s judgments and decisions about use of resources and systems, especially energy and water?

Shahzeen Z. Attari of

Indiana University explores this topic in her research.

hahzeen Z. Attari, an associate professor at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Bloomington, explores the intersection of cognitive and environmental sciences through her teaching and research. Her interests are reflected in her work on human behavior and resource use. Attari’s work has been published in various journals, including Judgment and Decision Making, Global Environmental Change, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Her research has also been featured in The New York Times and The Economist.

Attari was recently named a 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, a distinguished honor given to scholars, journalists, public intellectuals and authors who excel in the fields of

Above left: Shahzeen Z. Attari, an associate professor at Indiana University Bloomington’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Above: Attari (right) was one of the winners of the 2014 Campus Catalyst Award, which recognizes contributions to campus sustainability at Indiana University Bloomington.

science, law, technology, business and public policy. She was chosen for her project titled, “Motivating Climate Change Solutions by Fusing Facts and Feelings.” Each fellow receives up to $200,000 (Rs. 148 lakhs approximately) for their research and writing.

Attari is also involved in the Prepared for Environmental Change initiative of Indiana University.

Excerpts from an interview.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 7

How do people, at an individual level, approach environmental concerns?

Individuals approach environmental problems in a variety of ways. Many people who believe climate change is a problem may not know what they can do about it or they may think that their behavior is only a drop in the ocean and will not lead to a significant change. We need to identify ways through which these drops start adding up and motivate people to change their behavior and vote for policies that can make a difference in how we

DIANE HENSHEL/ TEDxBloomington/Courtesy Flickr

Below: Shahzeen Z. Attari delivers a talk at TEDxBloomington.

What are the most significant environmental concerns of today?

We face many environmental problems, but climate change is one of the biggest and most challenging ones. Climate change will accelerate and exacerbate many other environmental and social problems. This doesn’t just mean our weather will get warmer, it also means we will need to deal with more extreme weather events, sea level rise, heat waves, species extinction, ocean acidification, wildfires and many more impacts.

Go Online

Indiana University 2018 Andrew Bloomington Carnegie Fellows 8 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

www.indiana.edu https://bit.ly/2PaEerK

“ ”

Stories can move people,

so I want to investigate how we can use stories to protect our environment.

use energy and protect the environment. We also need a price on carbon dioxide, so we can account for the pollutants, and start systematically decreasing our emissions to zero.

Please tell us about the field of environmental and cognitive science.

This is a growing field in research and academia, but has been around for a few decades, with leaders in the field coming from psychology, sociology, anthropology, cognitive science and economics backgrounds. The research questions we ask and answer in this area are very interdisciplinary. The ones I have focused on in my career include: How do people perceive how much energy and water different appliances use? How do people understand how the water system works? How do we motivate behavior change? And, how do people prefer to change their behavior?

You were recently named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow. What are your research project aims?

As an Andrew Carnegie Fellow, I aim to identify key solutions to motivate action on climate change through three research challenges. I plan to:  Articulate and compile a detailed library of politically-feasible climate solutions to reduce carbon emissions in our energy systems.  Identify the psychological barriers that limit public support for these solutions and distill effective behavioral and policy heuristics that will allow novices a clear pathway to action.



Investigate how to facilitate significant behavior change and positive public sentiment by teaching these heuristics by providing emotional and cognitive scaffolding using stories and narratives.

Stories can move people, so I want to investigate how we can use stories to protect our environment.

How do you see the role of women evolving in the sciences?

We need true gender equality in the sciences and academia, and we are far away from it.

This is caused by a variety of complex factors that we need to address as a society. We are starting to see some changes, but a lot of work remains to be done for there to be equality at the top. In my perspective, both women and men need mentorship on how to bring about this change—starting from not penalizing women who have children and allowing women to speak and be heard to calling out aggression against women in research and science.

I have been blessed with some amazing male and female mentors in my life, who have nurtured me when I was a college student all the way to being a professor. I have also been blessed with an amazing family, which has supported my decision to pursue research and academia, even though my pursuit went against cultural norms. Having parents who nurture their children’s curiosity when they are young is so important. I owe my success to them.

Natasa Milas is a freelance writer based in New York City.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 9

Monitoring

Photographs courtesy Amit Tandon

By RANJITA BISWAS

10 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Fulbright-Nehru scholar Amit Tandon works to improve monsoon forecasts for South Asia.

the Left: Fulbright-Nehru scholar Amit Tandon and his team of researchers sailed on the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson on the waters of the Bay of Bengal to examine various aspects of monsoon winds.

Below: Tandon at the South and Central Asia Fulbright Conference in New Delhi in February.

Below right: Tandon (second from left) with officials of the Indian Ministry of Earth Sciences onboard the Thomas G. Thompson.

I

n India, as in most parts of Southeast and South Asia, monsoon winds—their timely arrival and dispersal—can make or break a farmer’s life. The economies of the countries on the monsoons’ paths are affected as well, so much so that weathermen in India, for instance, release predictions of a “good” or an “insufficient” monsoon to forewarn citizens and government agencies, so that they can take necessary measures. Thus, accurately predicting the monsoon’s mood in the coming season is of utmost importance.

Amit Tandon, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and a 2017-2018 Fulbright-Nehru senior researcher, is involved in a project that aims to develop a better model for predicting monsoons in South Asia and improve global weather forecasts. He leads a team of scientists from different countries. The project is also supported by the Office of Naval Research, an executive branch agency within the U.S. Department of Defense.

Tandon conducted his four-month fellowship research titled, “Studying the Impact of Ocean Mixing, Oceanic Fronts and Air-Sea Interaction in the Bay of Bengal for Reliable Intra-Seasonal Prediction of South Asian Monsoons,” at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.

This year, Tandon and his team sailed on the research vessel Thomas G.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 11

Photographs courtesy Amit Tandon

Go Online

Above: A scientist at work onboard the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson.

Above right: Tandon (center) conducts an outdoor class for students at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

University of Massachusetts Dartmouth www.umassd.edu

Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships www.usief.org.in/ Fellowships.aspx

12 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Thompson, owned by the Office of Naval Research, on the choppy waters of the Bay of Bengal to examine various aspects of monsoon winds. Asked why they chose this particular region, Tandon explains, “The Bay of Bengal is where the summer monsoon originates. Even though the surface winds come from the southwest, the rainbands and the clouds associated with those rains originate in the Bay of Bengal for much of India.”

He goes on to add, “The winds during the summer monsoon, at lower heights and at sea level, have a constant direction; they come from the southwest for much of the summer monsoon and they reverse direction during the winter.”

Today, however, questions are being raised if these regions are over-dependent on the monsoon, especially in the context of climate change.

Tandon agrees that India is certainly “very dependent” on the monsoon. He adds that there is robust evidence to suggest that monsoons are showing significant rising trends in the frequency and the magnitude of extreme rain events.

There is also a decreasing trend in the frequency of moderate events over central India during the monsoon season. “This is cause for tremendous concern, from being ready for intense rain events and floods to paucity of rain in between, in terms of agriculture as well as emergency preparedness,” says Tandon.

One can look at recent reports about geological findings in the Krem Mawmluh caves in Meghalaya, which show how a massive drought in the Holocene epoch,

the current period of geological time, led to widespread migration, including in India.

“Technically, a 10 percent variation in monsoon rainfall leads to what is called a flood or a drought year. So, such seemingly small variations in monsoons are very intense and significant on a national scale.

A 20 percent decrease or increase could cause havoc for society,” says Tandon.

So, as the monsoon gets increasingly erratic, how will his research track or predict its onset? “This research will help determine the fundamental reasons why the forecast models cannot accurately predict the monsoons 7 to 14 days in advance. Such forecasts from all forecast centers in India, the United States, Europe, Australia, etc. have large errors at this time,” he says.

“Globally, we can’t make reliable predictions more than 10 days ahead.

Understanding the science of the monsoons is critical to generating the two-week weather predictions. However, these forecasting challenges have been unsolved for at least 100 years. As scientists and engineers, we have to keep trying our best to allow nature to open up her secrets to us,” says Tandon in an article on the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth website.

“It’s a privilege to study and probe nature in this way,” he says, “to try and coax the atmosphere and ocean system to reveal its way of working to us.”

Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based journalist.

She also translates fiction and writes short stories.

The Poet and the

Pulitzer

By MICHAEL GALLANT

“A writer doesn’t dream about writing.

A writer writes.”—Vijay Seshadri

Award-winning writer Vijay

Seshadri

CHRIS TAGGART

discusses the writing process, and the mysteries inherent in crafting worldrenowned poetry.

One might expect a writer as accomplished as Vijay Seshadri to simply snap a finger and summon brilliant words from empty air, as if by instant and effortless magic. In reality, he describes, the act of creating a poem, article or book manuscript is much less mystical and much harder work.

“When it comes to writing, there’s really no process that I’ve been able to discern, other than constantly beating my head against a wall of text until I can make it yield something,” says Seshadri. “To be a successful writer, you have to develop the stamina to sit with a difficult problem—of the poem, essay or short story— until you can wrestle it to the ground. And that’s something that you acquire over time.”

Such a perspective is based on hard-won experience. Born in Bengaluru in 1954, Seshadri moved to Columbus, Ohio, as a young child and first aspired to a wordsmith future at age 14. “I wanted to be a writer because I read and read and read,” he says. “That’s all kids like me did in those days. There was no Internet or computers for us to rely on.” Seshadri discovered contemporary poetry as he was entering college, and crafted his first poem that same semester.

In 1982, Seshadri moved to New York City and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University, through which he started studying Indian languages. Simultaneously, his poems were being published in several renowned magazines. He then entered the university’s Ph.D. program in Middle Eastern Languages and Literature, through which he studied Persian and Urdu. A South Asian study trip to Lahore, Pakistan, convinced Seshadri that a shift away from his Ph.D. program was needed. “I was interested in South Asian politics; the history of partition, in particular. But, I decided on that trip that I most definitely did not want to pursue an academic career,” he says.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 13

Courtesy Vijay Seshadri

JASON DECROW © AP Images

Above: Vijay Seshadri (right), winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, with Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger during the award ceremony at the university in New York City. Seshadri won the honor for his poem collection, “3 Sections” (above right).

Below right: Seshadri teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.

www.pulitzer.org

Sarah Lawrence College BILL MILES

www.sarahlawrence.edu

Columbia University www.columbia.edu 14 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Go Online

The Pulitzer Prizes

Seshadri returned to New York, unemployed and unsure of his next step.

Fortunately, he found an opportunity with The New Yorker, a literary and cultural magazine that had published several of his poems over the years.

Seshadri worked as a copy editor with the magazine from 1993 to 2000. At the same time, he began teaching poetry at various schools in the New York area, all while his poems continued to win publications and gain acclaim. In 1998, he joined the Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, first as a guest faculty and then, in 2000, as a regular faculty member. He has been instructing aspiring writers there ever since.

Throughout his career, Seshadri’s

creativity, perspective and work ethics have earned him success that few poets achieve. Among other accomplishments, he received the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, arguably the most prestigious award of its kind. His winning work, “3 Sections,” was described by the Pulitzer committee as “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless.”

He has also received grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

To young writers, who hope to

achieve similar success through their creativity, Seshadri’s primary advice is simple: read. “You write to exercise the obsession of your imagination and you read to feed that obsession,” he says.

“You can’t be a writer without being a reader.” Furthermore, Seshadri reiterates, successful aspirations are rooted in actions. “Writers should always be striving to produce things,” he continues.

“They should also find communities of like-minded writers, because I don’t think that a writer writes in isolation, but in relationship to smaller and larger communities. And, they should always strive to share and publish their work.”

When it comes to writing itself, Seshadri says, a combination of tenacity,

patience and flexibility is key. “I still don’t really understand how you write a poem,” he adds, with a laugh.

“Sometimes, you just work at it, even writing the same text over and over again until it’s done. Other times, it’s easy, like taking dictation. But it’s never quite the same with any piece of writing.”

The process of writing can be long, hard and painful, continues Seshadri, “but it can also be a way of restoring the balance that human experience has taken away from you. It’s healing, restorative and truly exciting.”

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

“ ”

You can’t be a writer without being a reader.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 15

Sampriti Bhattacharyya has developed underwater drones that could help in rescue missions and explorations, as well as prevent radiation leakage under the sea.

Deepwater Drones

Courtesy Sampriti Bhattacharyya

By JASON CHIANG

Left: Sampriti Bhattacharyya with the autonomous, underwater drone developed by her.

16 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Growing up in India, what were your earliest interests?

When I lived in Kolkata, I had access to the Discovery Channel on TV for a couple of hours. I was fascinated by a documentary on the Mars rover missions. I was really intrigued by outer space, robots and NASA. I wanted to be an astrophysicist, but there were very limited options.

What led you to the United States and what do you feel are some of the biggest differences between Indian and U.S. colleges?

The majority of undergraduate colleges in India are very different from those in America—most of them don’t provide any hands-on experience and there are barely any resources available to do much building. A close friend told me about an internship he had taken at a U.S. university lab. I began searching for a similar opportunity. After sending over 500 emails, I landed an internship with Fermilab, one of America’s premier particle physics laboratories. That was my first handson experience in cutting-edge engineering. I knew there was no going back.

How did the idea for Hydroswarm come together?

For my doctoral studies at MIT, I started working with Ford Professor of Engineering

LILLIE PAQUETTE

Below: Sampriti Bhattacharyya (center) holds a prototype of the underwater drone as she talks to the Hydroswarm team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

We usually associate drones with smart machines that fly in the sky.

Hydroswarm, a Boston-based start-up founded by Sampriti Bhattacharyya, is introducing the world to a completely different use of drones—underwater. The company is working on developing new approaches to marine conservation, sustainability and preservation.

Bhattacharyya developed football-sized autonomous, underwater drones while pursuing her Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These drones are expected to open new possibilities for ocean exploration and maritime big data. She is also the co-founder of Lab-X Foundation, a Boston-based nonprofit organization committed to providing hands-on opportunities and global exposure to students.

Excerpts from an interview.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 17

Lab-X Foundation http://labxfoundation.org

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Courtesy Sampriti Bhattacharyya and Harry Asada

www.hydroswarm.com

Go Online

Hydroswarm

www.mit.edu

Above: An underwater drone skims along a ship’s hull to identify hollow spots, using ultrasound, where smuggled goods might be hidden.

“ ”

Don’t say, ‘I’m terrible in math, I can never do engineering.’ Try engineering; don’t be scared of it.

18 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Harry Asada on an underwater robot designed to look for cracks in nuclear reactors’ water tanks. One day, I was reading about contraband smuggling and I thought our robots could also search ships for contraband hidden in cavities or fake chambers.

It was only after the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 went missing in 2014 that I realized how little we know about the oceans.

What excited me, in so many ways, was that the challenges in deepwater exploration are so much more than in space, I think. I suspected our little robots might be able to work together to map larger areas and assist in rescue efforts.

What are some of the practical applications of your underwater drones?

Hydroswarm has a lot of potential for the future—from monitoring contraband to assisting in rescue missions and explorations, as well as inspecting nuclear reactor vessels to prevent radiation leakage. I would be thrilled if I can contribute something to make oceans and ports secure and safe. Particularly, incidents like MH370 have made me realize that we need to step up our technology to enable faster and more effective rescue operations.

What inspired you to start your nonprofit organization, Lab-X Foundation, and what are its goals?

The co-founders of Lab-X met at The Ohio State University and had the same story. We all came from small engineering schools.

Why couldn’t we have stayed in India and built great stuff? Because nobody would have given us the opportunity to do something. I think, we are wasting a huge amount of human resources and talent we could put toward something much more innovative.

That’s why we started Lab-X, to help other aspiring engineers get the chance to innovate.

Our goal with Lab-X is to create a culture of hands-on learning through internship opportunities, research demonstrations and workshops, student poster and exhibit sessions, presentations from diverse speakers, and more.

Do you have any advice for future engineers or students who share your interests?

Believe in yourself, don’t be afraid to try new things and do something you truly enjoy.

Don’t say, “I’m terrible in math, I can never do engineering.” Try engineering; don’t be scared of it. Don’t give undue relevance to grades; in the end, it’s just a number out there. It’s really what you create with your hands and your mind that matters.

Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

A

husband-wife team of serial entrepreneurs is back with a new venture, after spending several years making mobile phone apps that have changed how we interact with music. One app turned speech into song, and was a breakout success. Another app turned singers into pitchperfect professionals. And now, this power couple is striving to make reading literature as addictive as texting, with a new product called HOOKED. The app’s namesake start-up has been co-founded by Parag Chordia and Prerna Gupta, who met at Stanford University, California, 14 years ago. Chordia is the company’s chief technology officer, while Gupta is its chief executive officer.

“We focus on opportunities that lie at the intersection of art and technology,” says Chordia, who plays the sarod. “In our last start-up, we used AI [artificial intelligence] to help people make music on their mobile phones. For example, one of our apps, Songify, turned speech into song. It was the number 1 app in the world when we launched it in July 2011. We love bringing moments of joy into people’s everyday lives.”

on

Hooked HOOKED Courtesy Parag Chordia

By CANDICE YACONO

After revolutionizing our interactions with music through their mobile phone apps, the duo of Parag Chordia and Prerna Gupta now aims to make reading as addictive as texting, with HOOKED.

Above: Parag Chordia (left) and Prerna Gupta, co-founders of HOOKED.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 19

www.paragchordia.com

Hooked

http://hooked.co/

Photographs courtesy Parag Chordia

Go Online

Parag Chordia

20 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

“

Chat fiction is a baby

”

step toward creating new media and experiences.

In his “past life,” says Chordia, he was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he founded and directed its Music Intelligence Lab, which was funded by organizations like the U.S. National Science Foundation. His research focused on marrying music and machine learning to create and model music, as well as on the neural underpinnings of musical emotion.

“We wanted to bring the unique joy of music creation to everyone,” says Chordia. “One approach we used, with some success, was to create algorithms that analyzed speech or singing and generated music. The idea was to give listeners the thrill of performing in a band.

This led to apps like LaDiDa, which we called ‘reverse-karaoke;’ Songify, which turned speech into song; and AutoRap, which turned regular speech into rap.”

Soon, Chordia and Gupta found themselves at the forefront of entertainment app development. They became major players in Silicon Valley, before choosing to leave it all behind for a while and travel the world. Now, they’re back with their latest project, HOOKED. The couple wants to offer entertainment to the mobile generation, as Chordia puts it. “We have pioneered a new format, called chat fiction, which tells stories as text message conversations,” he explains. Each text builds on the previous one, creating a compelling story arc that “hooks” the reader. “In the past month, close to 40 million people have read HOOKED stories on iOS, Android and Snapchat Discover,” he adds.

“We have made reading fun again for teens and millennials,” says Chordia. “Our goal is to create iconic stories that start in text form and, ultimately, may be translated into other formats like video or VR [virtual reality]. We believe that the next ‘Harry Potter’-type story will not necessarily be launched as a book, but rather, as a mobile experience. We hope to be the ones to create such deep and impactful stories.”

HOOKED as well as Chordia’s and Gupta’s previous efforts highlight the potential for mobile phone apps and other services at a time when millions have the potential to make or

enjoy art as well as share what they like and don’t like about it.

“One of the exciting aspects of creating apps is that launching them is just the start. After you launch an app, you see how users are responding and continually refine the product using this data,” says Chordia.

When the HOOKED team receives a new story or pitch, it can use this data to determine whether the story will be a hit or not. “We have spent the past several years refining this process, and I would say it’s the ‘special sauce’ of HOOKED,” he adds.

Rapid advances in technology have made apps like Songify and HOOKED possible. “The ability of machines to see and hear has dramatically improved,” says Chordia. “This creates tremendous opportunities for new types of art. Humans have always used the tools and technologies of the time to make art. For example, electronics and computers have transformed how music is made and have created many new genres. I’m really excited to think about how these new tools can be applied to create profound new experiences.”

He adds that apps like HOOKED are just the latest iteration of an art as old as humanity: the story.

“Stories are one of the most universal forms of art. They bind us together and are magical in how they allow us to feel and see from another person’s perspective. They are a uniquely human way of imagining different worlds and experiences. Just as the beginning of the 20th century was a time of tremendous change in the technologies for creative expression—think of sound recording, photography and moving pictures—we are again at the cusp of a radical transformation,” says Chordia. “Billions of people now have a super-computer in their pockets; the implications for storytelling are profound. We are just beginning to explore this new space. Chat fiction is a baby step toward creating new media and experiences, which ultimately will give a unique voice to the next generation’s hopes and desires.”

Candice Yacono is a magazine and newspaper writer based in southern California.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 21

Taking Care/of

By NATASA MILAS

Akash Shah’s start-up Care/of delivers personalized vitamin packs to consumers via monthly subscriptions.

Indian American entrepreneur Akash Shah is passionate about positively impacting people’s lives. This desire led him to co-found Care/of, a startup which delivers personalized vitamin packs to consumers via monthly subscriptions. Under his leadership, Care/of has raised over $46 million (Rs. 340 crores approximately) from venture capital firms like Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Goodwater Capital, Tusk Ventures, RRE Ventures and Juxtapose. Shah was featured in Forbes magazine’s 2018 30 Under 30 list in the retail and ecommerce category.

Excerpts from an interview.

Please tell us about your background, education and work experience.

I was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, where my parents currently reside, after emigrating from India in 1984. I graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School and a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies from the university’s Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business. I currently live in New York City with my wife, a nurse practitioner who specializes in women’s health.

In 2015, I partnered with former vice president of marketing at Bonobos, Craig Elbert, to disrupt the $39 billion (Rs. 2,88,000 crores approximately) vitamins and supplements industry through a personalized customer experience. Since its launch in 2016, Care/of has doubled revenues every two months, acquired tens of thousands of active subscribers and quickly emerged as a market leader.

Prior to Care/of, I co-founded Hometeam, a techenabled in-home senior care provider that has raised over $40 million (Rs. 295 crores approximately).

Since starting the company in 2013 with Forbes’ 30

22 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

Under 30 alumnus Josh Bruno, Hometeam has helped create peace of mind for thousands of families and employed over 1,000 professional caregivers. Both Care/of and Hometeam are testaments to my personal drive and desire to positively impact people’s lives.

What do you feel are some of the biggest problems faced by consumers when trying to choose the right vitamins and mineral supplements?

There are a few problems. First, the vitamin aisle is overwhelming and confusing. There are lots of options. It is very difficult for consumers to decide what’s right for them. Second, many people are skeptical of what’s out there. It is difficult for consumers to know which brands are trustworthy.

Third, it is hard for consumers to know whether their vitamins or other supplements are working. There is no feedback loop.

Please explain how Care/of works.

We allow people to build personalized daily vitamin packs. Here’s how it works.  Tell us about yourself: Answer a few easy

questions about your goals, lifestyle and values.

See the recommendations: We recommend the right vitamins and supplements. Add or remove as you see fit.  Get personalized daily vitamin packs: Receive a box of personalized packs each month. Adjust or cancel any time. Free shipping on orders over $20 (Rs. 1,470 approximately).

We’re all unique (hurrah!). Thus, with the differences in our goals and lifestyles, the idea of a mass-market multivitamin becomes outdated. The most compelling research on supplements is for specific populations. We try to help consumers find 

Photographs courtesy Care/of

Health Above and below: Akash Shah’s (left) start-up Care/of helps its customers build daily vitamin packs based on their goals and lifestyles.

Care/of

https://takecareof.com

University of Pennsylvania

www.upenn.edu

Hometeam

www.hometeamcare.com

what’s right for them. Our Scientific Advisory Board is comprised of leading doctors, scientists and nutrition experts. We work with them closely on our product development, recommendation logic and to stay on top of the latest research findings. Everything is manufactured and tested in the United States.

We may not have all the answers, as the science is nuanced, but we always tailor our guidance to a consumer as an individual.

Natasa Milas is a freelance writer based in New York City.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 23

Algorithms

B

By JASON CHIANG

Saket Navlakha

Courtesy Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Photographs courtesy Saket Navlakha

studies the unique parallels between biology and computer science.

24 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

iological systems are highly complex, and we still have only a basic understanding of how they work. To understand the evolution and unique interactions of large biological networks, Saket Navlakha, an assistant professor at Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego, California, is developing new algorithms and studying the “algorithms in nature.” For example, how groups of distributed molecules and cells communicate and process information to collectively solve computational problems. He is working to connect theoretical computer science and systems biology, and develop new ways to learn from biological data. Navlakha is one of the 22 researchers to be named a 2018 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences in June. Each scholar receives $300,000 (Rs. 220 lakhs approximately) over four years.

Excerpts from an interview.

How did you first become interested in biomedical sciences?

My father was a computer scientist, so that was the path I decided to follow for my undergraduate studies. When I began to take some of the more advanced computer science classes at Cornell University [in Ithaca, New York], my interest really took off. During graduate school, I became especially interested in networks and how different network structures can affect processing. There was one biology class I took that showed me the amazing intersection of networks and biological functions. My professor convinced me that this was going to be a very important area in the near future and that I should get in on the ground floor.

What is your typical process for uncovering a hidden algorithm in nature and what indicators do you look for?

Typically, we notice something that a biological system is doing, which seems interesting in terms of solving a common problem that occurs in many other different contexts. One of the examples we published recently studies the brain and how it does something called a “similarity search.” Every day, the websites you visit and the smartphone apps you use are crunching huge sets of data to find things that resemble each other—products on Amazon similar to your past purchases, songs similar to the tunes you’ve liked and faces similar to the people you’ve identified in photos. All these tasks are known as similarity searches. The ability to match similar items accurately and quickly is an ongoing challenge for computer scientists. We wanted to investigate the neurocircuits in our

brains that are responsible for carrying forth this type of computation, and how does this process compare with systems that are being used in computer science.

In your past work, you have compared the brain of fruit flies to search engines, and certain plant architectures to subway systems. What are some of the other unique parallels in biology that you are interested in exploring further?

We are very interested in the immune system.

It is an incredibly efficient system that keeps out pathogens and things attacking the body’s wellbeing. We have been approaching this like a computer security problem—comparing pathogens’ behavior to computer hackers or viruses. How do you detect them? How do you eliminate them?

How do you distribute your resources efficiently to run a smooth security system? This process has been going on inside the immune system for thousands of years, so we are looking to learn what optimizations have been made and how we can apply those lessons practically.

Did being named a Pew Scholar help open new doors for your research?

It’s quite an honor, especially since the award typically goes to more traditional biology honorees. The fact that they are recognizing the more computational angle is indicative of the way the field is shifting. I’m very excited to connect with other Pew Scholars. There is an annual meeting where all past and present winners get together to exchange research and ideas. It’s a very diverse group of people from different fields of biology. So, I’m looking forward to building contacts and collaborations with such a great group of minds.

What new challenges excite you?

For computer scientists, the human brain has always been a thing of awe and beauty. There are things the brain does that no computer can do, while also using only 20 watts of energy, which is amazingly less than that of a light bulb! If we can understand the brain well enough and use those lessons to improve machine learning, it will lead to new ways to solve future computational problems. I’m excited to speed up this convergence between neuroscience and machine learning, and do it in a way that both fields can benefit from each other.

Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

www.salk.edu

Algorithms in Nature

www.algorithmsinnature.org

The Pew Charitable Trusts www.pewtrusts.org

Above: Saket Navlakha (right), his colleague Joanne Chory (left) and other Salk scientists found similarities between plant architectures and complex subway systems (far left).

Above far left: Navlakha was also part of a team of scientists that studied the unique way fruit flies conduct similarity searches just like a search engine.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 25

Go Online

in Nature

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Food for Thought

By PAROMITA PAIN

Journalist and educator Simran Sethi explores the cultural and emotional importance of food, and highlights the threats to its diversity across the world.

F CAROLINA LORENZO/Courtesy Flickr

ood sustains life, but is there more to it? For Simran Sethi, food’s vital connections with people and communities—its taste, smell and origins—is a story that calls for deeper exploration. A journalist and educator focused on food, sustainability and social change, Sethi has been named an environmental “messenger” by Vanity Fair magazine and designated as one of the top eight women saving the planet by Marie Claire magazine. She is the author of “Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love,” which was named one of the best food books of 2016

26 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

by the Smithsonian. She is also the creator of “The Slow Melt,” a podcast devoted to chocolate—highlighting the people, places and processes behind this industry. Sethi’s work in the field is steeped in the concepts of social justice and public education.

Her interest in the area of food sustainability and social change developed in the late 1990’s. “An essay

by Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute, talked about hunger as not simply an absence of food, but as an experience built on geopolitics,” says Sethi. “She really helped build my ideas

JORDAN STRAUSS © AP Images/Invision

Courtesy Simran Sethi

Above: Journalist and author Simran Sethi.

Above right: Sethi (right) at The Darker Side Of Green debate in California.

about food justice and hunger issues.”

The Oakland Institute is a Californiabased think tank.

Means to resolution “Food is a lens through which we can work to resolve many of the issues facing our world today, like climate change, and other social and cultural challenges,” says Sethi. “No country in this modern era is self-sufficient in feeding itself.”

Therefore, food can be an important area to connect and bond.

As an area of research, food is deeply connected to social justice. “The people

who feed us, like the small farmers who grow food, are often the poorest and eat a different kind of food than what they serve others,” explains Sethi. “These are issues of equity that need further exploration.”

A way to reduce such inequalities is to ensure that the public is more aware of what goes into food production, for instance, by making stories of food production more personal. The act and art of growing, preparing and sharing food are deeply emotional and intimate experiences. Sethi knows how powerful such connections can be. When she began

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 27

Go Online

Simran Sethi

https://simransethi.com

“Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love” https://simransethi.com/ breadwinechocolate

“The Slow Melt”

MATT MARQUEZ © AP Images/ Feature Photo Service for Barilla

https://theslowmelt.com

Above: Simran Sethi (second from left) participates in a panel discussion at the launch of the second edition of “Eating Planet— Food and Sustainability: Building Our Future” in New York City.

“

Food is also a lens through which we can work to resolve many of the issues facing our world today.

28 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

writing her book on how the foods we enjoy are endangered by genetic erosion, a loss of diversity in what we grow and eat, she realized the deep connections between biological characteristics, personal preferences and emotions. “It was then that I started thinking about all the food we use on a daily basis, like coffee that starts our day or chocolate that mends broken hearts,” she says.

“When we drink a cup of coffee that starts our day, do we think about the farmer who grew it? Do we think about its environmental impact?” Through her book, she aims to inspire people to eat more consciously, better understand familiar and new foods, and learn what it would take to save this world of tastes.

Nourish and connect Food, for Sethi, is also a means of nourishing the body. As she says, “Deliciousness is something precious. Flavors matter.” She is also always inspired by the people she writes about. Her subjects are diverse and range from small farmers’ holdings growing cocoa and producers creatively using technology to connect people to researchers examining why people from

low-income communities feed their children the food that others consider unhealthy. “Food represents so much of who we are,” says Sethi. “For me, it’s a constantly-changing puzzle.”

Encourage diversity As Sethi explains, she was always aware that certain varieties of fruits, meats and vegetables were going extinct, but it was when she started writing her book that she grasped its effects on the whole ecosystem.

“So, in my book, I make a case for saving food by savoring them,” she says. The key to public education lies in being able to place issues within people’s existing contexts.

Sethi adds that everyone can play a role in enhancing and encouraging agrodiversity. “It is as easy as shopping from farmers’ markets and choosing restaurants that source their produce locally,” she says. “Volunteering with food banks and using skills like social media or marketing expertise to help organizations increase their reach are also very valuable.”

Paromita Pain is a journalist based in Austin, Texas.

Communicating With Music

By BURTON BOLLAG

As an Indian American,

Sameer Patel

Courtesy Sameer Patel

chose a fairly uncommon career by becoming a musical conductor.

Sameer Patel, associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony, leads a performance by the orchestra at the finale of its Bayside Summer Nights concert in California.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 29

S Courtesy Sameer Patel

ameer Patel’s parents had pretty conventional hopes for their son. “Like many Indian American parents, they hoped I’d become a doctor, lawyer, engineer or businessman,” says Patel. Things turned out differently, but his parents were not disappointed. Today, Patel, 36, is one of the leading young musical conductors in the United States.

Patel is in his third season as the associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony orchestra.

And, for the third year in a row, he has received a Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award, an honor given to the country’s best young conductors. Patel is also the associate conductor of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, whose musicians come from some of the finest orchestras in North America.

It is a fairly uncommon career path for an Indian American, but it was blazed a generation-and-ahalf earlier by another famous Indian American conductor, Mumbai-born Zubin Mehta. “Even

30 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

friends of my family who don’t know [Western] classical music know of him,” says Patel.

Patel’s parents are of Gujarati origin, born and raised in Kenya. His father went to Mumbai to study medicine and then, in the late 1970’s, he moved to Detroit, Michigan, with his wife, where he began a long career practicing medicine.

Patel and his brother had a typical American upbringing in Michigan, going to public schools and playing sports—tennis, basketball and soccer.

Their parents were not particularly interested in music, he says. But they made their sons study music. “They saw it as an opportunity for us to get a hobby as well as discipline.”

Patel studied piano, but it felt like a chore as he was not very interested in it. Then, at the age of 13 or 14, his teacher, an elderly Italian man, introduced him to the works of the 19th-century Polish composer Frédéric Chopin. “This was really the light turning on for me,” he says. “It was a

I have lots of pride in my Indian background. When I go to India, I feel part of it.

”

San Diego Symphony www.sandiegosymphony.org

Sun Valley Summer Symphony http://svsummersymphony.org/

University of Michigan http://umich.edu/ NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 31

Go Online

“

Burton Bollag is a freelance journalist living in Washington, D.C.

ARIELLE DONESON

Below: Sameer Patel (center), associate conductor of the Sun Valley Summer Symphony, leads the orchestra at Orchestra Festival 2018’s Family Concert.

Below right: Patel is a recipient of three consecutive Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Awards.

also an advocate for music education, and enjoys teaching and learning from the students he works with at music festivals, school programs and youth orchestras across the United States.

His goal is to become the musical director—the chief conductor—of a major orchestra. “I know I want to share Western classical music with as many people as I can,” says Patel.

Living in Southern California with his wife, Shannon, and their son, Devan, Patel is part of the rich mosaic of American life. “I have an immigrant background. I trained in the U.S. and my wife is an American,” he says. At the same time, “I have lots of pride in my Indian background. When I go to India, I feel part of it. When I visit my grandfather in his ancestral village in Gujarat, I feel very proud.”

profound encounter with beauty and art.”

From then on, there was no looking back.

Young Patel began devouring Western classical music. He played in his school band, where the band leader lent him recordings of different composers each week, giving him a broad classical music education. He also went to music summer camps. After graduating high school, he enrolled at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in orchestral conducting. Every summer, he went to different European countries to participate in master classes.

Then began his career as a conductor, first as a conducting fellow with the Boston Philharmonic, then as an assistant conductor with the Fort Wayne Philharmonic in Indiana and, starting in fall 2015, as associate conductor of the San Diego Symphony in California. Patel does guest conducting with numerous other orchestras. He is

Poems and

Performances

By TREVOR LAURENCE JOCKIMS

W Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay, Nashville’s first Youth Poet Laureate, talks about her journey, the future of poetry and the power of narration.

hen Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay was named Nashville’s first Youth Poet Laureate, she was already an accomplished singer-songwriter.

“Youth Poet Laureate came out of nowhere in my life,” she says. “The application for the competition required three poems. And, I only had three poems, as I was a songwriter for most of my life.” Nevertheless, at the behest of her mother, Mukhopadhyay submitted her application and was chosen for the honor in 2015. The program aims to identify young writers and leaders committed to civic and community engagement, diversity and tolerance across the city.

In her capacity as a Youth Poet Laureate, Mukhopadhyay has been winning over audiences with her striking delivery of her equally striking poetry. Her events have ranged from state-level performances and a reading at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago to a meeting with the then-U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House. Mukhopadhyay was also named Southeast Regional Youth Poet Laureate in 2016 and was one of the five finalists for the 2017 National Youth Poet Laureate competition, which recognizes youth with a history of artistic success and leadership.

“I started writing poetry the summer before my junior year of high school,” says Mukhopadhyay. This creative work grew out of her songwriting practice, but through the search for a new mode of expression. “I had always been writing songs. I had this concept that I did not think would work well in a song.

So, I decided to take a stab at a poem. Since then, it has become my favorite form of selfexpression,” she adds.

As much as she is a voice in the contemporary landscape of American poetry, Mukhopadhyay is also a careful student of her

32 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

past. “My father always says that to be a second-class writer, you have to be a first-class reader,” she says. Her favorite poets come from the modernist and Beat traditions, with a particular affinity for Allen Ginsberg and E.E. Cummings. But, Mukhopadhyay says, “I was raised on my father’s favorites of Robert Frost and Rabindranath Tagore. Poetry in Bengali, my mother tongue, was always read to me and evoked such lyrical qualities.”

One of the prime responsibilities of a Youth Poet Laureate is to carry poetic tradition forward. Mukhopadhyay is optimistic about the prospects of poetry. “I believe that poetry is on the come up in contemporary American culture, whether that be through the form of spoken word or the carefully-crafted page poetry,” she says. “The form is teaching people how to feel again and reminding them of the importance of thinking deeply about the world one inhabits and one’s place in it.”

This ability of poets to lead their readers and listeners to careful thinking and reflection is borne out by Mukhopadhyay’s close involvement with the performative side of poetry. “Performance is a very underrated aspect of poetry…the poem must come alive on stage, adding to the full understanding and appreciation of the piece,” she says. “There is just something about reading a poem out loud, whether it be to a crowd or to oneself during the editing process, which takes on other meanings and inflections. What can be hidden on the page can reveal itself in one’s voice.” She read from her book “This is Our War” at an event hosted by the American Library Kolkata in 2017.

Part of Mukhopadhyay’s commitment to, and great talent for, performance comes from her background in the oral traditions. As she explains, “Borrowing from the narration and

https://bit.ly/2Ee3rk8

National Youth Poet Laureate http://youthlaureate.org

Courtesy Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay

Lagnajita Mukhopadhyay has won many accolades for her poems.

Go Online

Nashville Youth Poet Laureate

recitation traditions of India, where some make a living reading and recording others’ poetry, and inspired by my father’s exercise in such traditions, I try to do all I can to make a poem breathe in a performance.”

In this way, the poetic line becomes flexible, tied to the voice of the writer. And Mukhopadhyay has found her own voice in her poetry. “Rhyme and meter are classic elements of poetry, which must be exercised like a muscle from time to time. But, I am a steady proponent of free verse, as it leaves more room on the page and for the poet to speak. I do feel that form is helpful in creating a contained idea, but I love when those forms are looser,” she says. This relationship to form can be seen in these lines from her poem, “The City That Never Stops Giving.”

The city never stops giving on the corner of 6th and Broadway where downtown traffic is a harrowing consistency, when the light turns green, it doesn’t always mean go.

Where Roy Orbison wrote “Oh Pretty Woman,” emboldened by the femme of mercy below his apartment balcony where tourists and the music leave a warm taste of affinity, by the Starbucks in the Renaissance that snags money from teenagers who rendezvous before school.

They never spell my name right on the little cups filled with magic. ...

Trevor Laurence Jockims teaches writing, literature and contemporary culture at New York University.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 33

Courtesy Arup Varma

I https://bit.ly/2Onc4NO

Loyola University Chicago

Go Online

Fulbright-Nehru Fellowships

t is well accepted that the performance of an organization, among other things, depends significantly on the “human” element. A happy workforce makes for a happy ambience and is conducive to good performance. Thus, the human resources (HR) department is an important part of organizations these days.

Human resources expert Arup Varma has a particular interest in expatriate employee issues in organizations. While he was working in the human resources department of two leading organizations in New Delhi, one of his key responsibilities was to help set up their performance management system. “This experience convinced me to pursue a Ph.D. and specialize in performance management or appraisal. After all, it’s well known that individuals need performance information to stay on track,” says Varma, who had earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Kolkata and Jamshedpur, respectively. In 1996, he went to Rutgers University in New Jersey to pursue a Ph.D. in industrial relations and human resources.

He is now a professor at Quinlan School of Business in Loyola University Chicago.

Varma is also a 2017-2018 Fulbright-Nehru fellow. His project titled, “Performance Appraisal of Expatriates,” was hosted by the Indian Institute of Management in Lucknow. “I enjoyed the Fulbright experience tremendously and I am proud to call myself a Fulbright alumnus,” says Varma. He is developing a comprehensive model to help organizations manage the performance of expatriates.

With the increase in globalization, the flow of talent has increased significantly and individuals are moving between countries on a regular basis.

Here lies the importance of having a contextappropriate model to evaluate expatriates, both inbound and outbound, and to assess their contribution to the organizations’ better performance.

From his personal experience, Varma finds that the same issues seem to dominate conversations.

“The expatriates feel that folks at their headquarters do not understand their situation, while the HR folks and the managers complain that expatriates have unreasonable expectations,” he says.

While an expatriate’s job responsibilities may not differ much from someone in the same position back home, the context varies significantly. From being in a new culture with new colleagues and a new work environment, to dealing with outside-world issues like arranging

www.luc.edu

34 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

accommodation and children’s schooling, and dealing with new languages and cuisine, an expatriate often has to juggle work and non-work demands. “Hence, it’s critical that organizations consider the ground realities of an expatriate’s job and adjust for these critical factors in his or her evaluations. Where organizations address these contextual issues, expatriates have been found to be more productive and satisfied with their jobs,” adds Varma.

Asked how much change he has observed, in both India and the United States, since he started out as a human resources expert, Varma says, “I have been studying and working in the field for over 35 years. I have seen steady changes in the field in terms of processes, though the basic philosophy has not changed.”

The primary function of the human resource team is to be an employee champion, and ensure that the organization creates conditions which allow every employee to do his or her best, while also growing professionally, says Varma.

“Ironically, in the quest to increase profits, many organizations treat their employees as easilyreplaceable cogs in a wheel, which leads to a vicious cycle—the employee recognizes that he or she is a low priority for the organization. In return, he or she reduces effort in his or her job, the organization sees a dip in performance and reduces the rewards offered to the employee, who notices this change and decides to work ‘just hard enough to not get fired.’ ” This chain of events is often repeated in all types of organizations across the world, feels Varma. But, it can be easily avoided if organizations are willing to manage the performance of their employees properly.

“Instead, the emphasis often is on using technology in HR processes. Without a doubt, the tremendous strides in technology can help organizations be more productive and profitable, but only if used appropriately,” he says.

Varma shares his experience of interviewing personnel from over 50 organizations across countries and industries. “Most conduct expatriate evaluation on ad hoc basis and don’t have contextappropriate evaluation models; well, not yet. The very few that do take expatriate evaluation seriously, report favorable reactions from both expatriates and their managers. I am confident that the model I am developing will fill this void.”

Ranjita Biswas is a Kolkata-based journalist. She also translates fiction and writes short stories.

Courtesy Arup Varma

Humane Human Resources

By RANJITA BISWAS

Fulbright-Nehru fellow and HR expert Arup Varma says organizations need to address contextual issues while appraising expatriates.

Top far left: Arup Varma at a pre-departure orientation organized by the U.S.-India Educational Foundation for Fulbright-Nehru scholars in New Delhi in 2018.

Right: Varma at Pangong Lake in Ladakh.

35

Author and professor

Jigna Desai works to transform people’s thinking about power dynamics in the South Asian diaspora.

Questioning Power

E

arly in her childhood, author Jigna Desai wanted to be an astrophysicist. In her college days at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the late 1980’s, she delighted in her studies of astronomy, but she concurrently realized her love for cinema. In the next few years, films about the Indian diaspora shaped her intellectual pursuits most profoundly.

Desai grew up with popular Hindi cinema. It is difficult to escape Indian cinema growing up in India or the diaspora. “But, the content of the films in the 1970’s was different. It was always about India, not the diaspora. My college years coincided with the emergence of Hanif Kureishi’s films and, then, other filmmakers’ works from 1985 to 1995, or so. It was this great emergence of feminist and queer diasporic films in an anglophone part of the diaspora that reflected life in the diaspora,” says Desai, a professor of gender, women and sexuality studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus.

36 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

By CARRIE LOEWENTHAL MASSEY

Desai took interest in the questions these films posed. “These were not just questions of cultural belonging—are you Indian enough?— but also, how are you facing issues of race, gender, sexuality and nation? What does it mean to be Indian and also British or American or Canadian? It’s not just an either/or,” she explains.

Desai’s first book, “Beyond Bollywood,” published in 2003, explores these issues through an in-depth analysis of diasporic and transnational cinema. The book came at a time when little scholarly work existed about the South Asian diaspora as a whole. It had not been theorized the way the African diaspora had been, she says. “I looked at what it means to think about these three places [Britain, America and Canada] in the diaspora together, the racialization of South Asians in these places, their history of migration, and so on, and to think about diaspora as a mode of critique. I couldn’t get published at first. I had

Photographs courtesy Jigna Desai

All of Desai’s work derives from her foundation in feminist and queer studies, as it’s all about questions of power and new ways of thinking and understanding, she emphasizes.

She collaborates with a wide range of graduate students at the University of Minnesota, several of whom come from India to work on issues of transnational gender and sexuality, as well as postcolonial queer experience.

Recently, Desai has heard from students also interested in studying about disability in postcolonial India, an area, she feels, is quite important. “I’m excited to see where that goes,” she says.

So, what about those childhood dreams of space and astrophysics? Desai still loves astronomy and tries to teach as much of it as she can to her children.

“I think my work inspires people to tell their stories and create their own knowledge. That’s really why I changed fields and why I didn’t stay an astronomer,” she says. “I liked gaining knowledge for knowledge’s sake, and astronomy gave me wonderful questions to think through. But, I love how I now get to transform other people’s knowledge production by helping to shape their thoughts on power dynamics in society. We need the humanities to change the world.”

University of Minnesota

https://twin-cities.umn.edu

Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.mit.edu

Carrie Loewenthal Massey is a New York Citybased freelance writer.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 37

Go Online

to market the ideas through the more popular lens of Bollywood to get it out there.”

Desai says her research always seeks to address questions of power and difference.

How these are understood in the diaspora ranges from class to religion, racial, gender and sexual differences. For example, how do queers fit in or not fit in? Now, she also focuses on differences due to disability, including neural and cognitive ones, coupled with issues of race, migration and postcoloniality.

“What happens to people who aren’t neurotypical? How can we dismantle stigmatization? What happens when ways of thinking about embodied difference become medicalized and globalized, and how does that interact with previous ways of knowing?” asks Desai. “We need to accept and value neural diversity, and see that there’s value in it, whether it’s through autism, dyslexia, ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder], or something else. We are all told that there is a right way to be and to exist. We are all held responsible for improving ourselves and our brains.” She goes on to explain that for some people, the interventions are done because they are seen as not normal and, therefore, not acceptable. “The question is, why do we expect normalization and when can we be accepted for who we are? How do race, nation and globalization impact our ideas of normal and abnormal brains?”

Far left: Jigna Desai, author of “Beyond Bollywood” (center left) and co-editor of “Asian Americans in Dixie: Race and Migration in the South” (left).

Capturing

Challenges

By JASON CHIANG

Inventor and MIT Media Lab professor

Ramesh Raskar talks about how his high-tech inventions and initiatives can help solve real-world problems.

LEN RUBENSTEIN

Right: Ramesh Raskar has co-invented an ultra-fast imaging camera that can see around corners or beyond the line of sight.

38 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

R

amesh Raskar is an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and directs its Camera Culture research group. He has dedicated his career to creating many impactful high-tech inventions and holds over 80 patents. As a researcher, inventor, mentor and changemaker, Raskar combines the best of the academic and entrepreneurial worlds to help improve the lives of people. He is the co-inventor of femto-photography, an imaging technology, which could help build cameras that can look around corners or see inside a human body without X-rays. Raskar has received several awards, including the 2016 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which honors outstanding mid-career inventors dedicated to improving the world through technological inventions.

Excerpts from an interview.

Go Online

MIT Media Lab

www.media.mit.edu

Camera Culture

http://cameraculture. media.mit.edu

Femtophotography

http://femtocamera.info

Please tell us about your background and what inspired you to create inventions to help others.

I am the youngest of four children and had a lot of support from my father and older siblings. Because I scored so high in my exams from an early age, I found myself on a certain path based on my academic abilities. My father served in the Indian Army and came from an extremely modest background. After he took an early retirement from military service, he dedicated himself to the education of his children and to helping others. For me, he set a prime example of what it means to work hard and to help others.

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 39

“ ”

My passion is to inspire a new generation of young people to solve problems at the right time.

JOI/Courtesy Wikipedia

Right: American filmmaker and producer J.J. Abrams (left) and Ramesh Raskar at MIT Media Lab.

What skills or qualities are most crucial for success in your field?

Ten or 15 years ago, I probably would have said it was all about being clever. But now, I realize that cleverness alone is not enough. The challenges we are facing in our world today are incredibly complex. So, at some level, an inventor’s job requires thinking in an antidisciplinary manner—not multidisciplinary or across fields, but in a way that looks beyond disciplines.

Could you briefly explain how femtophotography works?

The simplest analogy is probably sound. Most people can conceptualize how sound waves travel—they move relatively slowly—and it’s not difficult to understand how they disperse and flow around a room, or even around a corner. Light is similar, except it travels so much faster that we cannot process or sense the echoes of light in the same way we do sound.

But, just as sound moves around corners, with femto-photography, we are able to use echoes of light to see around corners or through things.

The technology is so fast that you can create slow-motion videos of light in motion. And with that, we can create cameras that can look around corners or beyond the line of sight.

Could you please share a few examples of the real-world problems that femtophotography can help solve?

The implications and applications of femtophotography are almost limitless. If you start by thinking about it in relation to things that we

40 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

already understand, you can imagine how it could, for instance, help a self-driving car see around the bend to know what’s coming ahead.

Or, how it could help with looking for survivors in hazardous conditions after a natural disaster.

What other projects are you working on right now, which have the potential to positively impact the lives of others?

My passion is to inspire a new generation of young people to solve problems at the right time. I want my work to play some small role in helping young people come up with solutions that we can’t even imagine yet.

REDX is a project we launched that stands for Rethinking Design Engineering Execution.

It brings together technical experts, innovators, research institutions, implementation partners and corporate partners to solve the most pressing challenges in our communities. The philosophy behind it is that in order to solve real problems in the world, we have to help young people learn the framework for problem-solving. It runs online and off—sort of like a club that meets once a week. We have such clubs now in almost every continent.

I’m also excited about our work on Kumbhathon, a year-round initiative in my native town of Nashik, Maharashtra.

Kumbhathon uses the REDX problem-solving model to bring together smart citizens to collaborate on developing solutions to world challenges in real-time with technology.

Jason Chiang is a freelance writer based in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.

Inspired Flavors, International Perspective

GARRETT ZIEGLER/Courtesy Flickr

Leadership Programs/Courtesy Flickr

wEnDy/Courtesy Flickr

Courtesy Duane Street Hotel

Courtesy Jehangir Mehta

By MICHAEL GALLANT

J

For Mumbai-born American chef and restaurateur Jehangir Mehta, a good meal blends the elements of taste, health and sustainability.

ehangir Mehta became known to millions of people around the world as the runner-up on Food Network’s “The Next Iron Chef.” But, when asked about his star turn on the televised culinary competition, he responds with a bashful smile.

“Everyone asks about it,” says the chef, “but there’s so much more to talk about!”

Indeed, in addition to making TV appearances, Mehta runs multiple renowned restaurants in New York City, is the author of an acclaimed pastry cookbook, “Mantra, The Rules of

Top, top left and above left: A few of the appetizing dishes served at Jehangir Mehta’s (above far left) restaurants in New York City.

Above: Bhel, an Indian street food, presented by Mehta at The Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival in 2015.

Indulgence,” and advocates for sustainability, both inside and outside the kitchen.

Sitting with him in a coffee shop in midtown Manhattan, the reasons for his widespread success become quickly

To share articles go to https://span.state.gov

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 41

apparent, as Mehta seems to be brimming with energy, ideas and inspiration.

Creative cuisine

Courtesy Jehangir Mehta

Mehta’s culinary creativity is on display at his restaurants, which include Me and You, an eatery that guests book far in advance for private, customized meals. “We write stories with food,” he says. “We start by sending you a questionnaire. ‘What’s your favorite meal?’

‘What movies do you like?’ ‘What books do you read?’ We formulate every course based on the answers that the guest gives.”

In practice, Mehta might include Polish and Spanish culinary elements in a meal prepared for a couple with roots in both countries. If tap dancing is mentioned in the questionnaire, he might even include Pop Rocks, a type of candy that translates into small, explosive bursts when placed in the mouth. “The idea is to use something that will help you relive memories through food,” he says.

42 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

While Mehta does not describe his cooking at Me and You, Graffiti Food & Wine Bar and Graffiti Earth as tasting overtly of Indian influences, the Mumbai-born chef does credit his heritage with instilling in him a love for culinary complexity.

“I don’t like bland,” he asserts. “Even if something isn’t spicy, I want to give everything I cook a flavor profile, herbs to give it an aroma and use different umami components.

Food should always have a big bang to it.

When it comes to my own cooking, that’s a part of me that cannot be taken out.”

Serving sustainability Beyond the kitchen, Mehta has a fascination with not just what people eat, but how they eat. In particular, how small changes in the eating experience can improve both personal health and environmental sustainability.

“A lot of research has been done by Stanford University and other colleges around

Below: The private dining area at Jehangir Mehta’s Graffiti Earth restaurant.

Right: Mehta (left) at a Roots Conference

by The Chef’s Garden in Ohio.

Far right: Mehta’s Me And You restaurant, which offers personalized dining experiences.

”

silverware are hand-me-downs, he says, and napkins are small squares of other cloth napkins that were salvaged as scrap material from New York’s nearby Garment District.

“The smaller napkins take less water and electricity to clean and iron,” he adds.

Mehta’s sustainability efforts go beyond the walls of his restaurants. As a sustainability consultant for the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he works on reducing food waste and increasing the use of locally- and sustainablysourced ingredients. He also works with the university to promote student wellness and social responsibility.

Mehta’s efforts at the university could be as seemingly minor as placing salad dressings in bottles, rather than small individual plastic containers, so less plastic and food end up being discarded. For him, every step, no matter how small, counts. He says, “Wherever we can save resources, reduce waste or lower energy usage, that’s where I come in.”

Courtesy Jehangir Mehta

Jehangir Mehta

www.jehangirmehta.com

Graffiti Food & Wine Bar

www.graffitinyc.com

Go Online

the world that have proven that, if you eat dessert off of a red plate, for example, it will actually taste sweeter than if you eat it off of a plate of a different color,” he says. “I want to start seeing ice cream made with less sugar being served in red cups or red-colored cones.

Nobody will feel the change and it will help make people eat less sugar.”

When it comes to sustainability, Mehta attributes his interest to his early years in India, where “not being wasteful is something you learn,” he says. It’s a principle that he applies every day at his restaurants.

“Since Graffiti began, not once have we purchased a notebook or placemat,” he says.

“We use old newspapers as placemats and reuse paper for everything. If there’s a dirty spot on a menu that we can’t clean, we burn the spot out. People thought it was us trying to get a certain style, a certain look,” Mehta continues, laughing, “but it was a necessity. If anything can be stretched and reused, why not stretch it?”

The sustainable practices ingrained in his restaurants don’t stop there. All crockery and

EDSEL LITTLE/Courtesy Flickr

“

Wherever we can save resources, reduce waste or lower energy usage, that’s where I come in.

Michael Gallant is the founder and chief executive officer of Gallant Music. He lives in New York City.

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018

43