I was eight years old when my country woke to the tragic news of the disintegration of the Columbia

space shuttle, killing Kalpana Chawla along with everyone else on board. However, I was simply
awestruck on learning about this pioneering Indian female, who ultimately became my inspiration to
study sciences.

I grew up in a middle-class household and my mother, who is a high school science teacher, instilled the
importance of education in me at a tender age, which reflected in my strong academic performance.
Apart from being endowed with the “Inspire Scholarship” for scoring above 99.9 percentile in the All
India Senior School Certificate Examination, I received three “Merit Scholarship” awards during my
undergraduate studies for my stellar academic performance.

Paying keen attention to academics, particularly sciences, generated an insatiable curiosity and kept me
up to date with every major technological advancement. I was, in fact, initiated into engineering through
subjects such as Electrical Gadgets and Aeromodelling during school. I tinkered with circuits in the lab,
built metal detectors, assembled remote-controlled aircrafts, and even tried my hand on building
miniature glider planes.

When I joined Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology, University of Delhi, I spent my first year of
engineering exploring the host of opportunities that opened before me. I became increasingly interested
in quantum mechanics and studied books and papers apart from coursework to get a deeper
understanding of it. I participated in a paper presentation competition at IIT, Roorkee to present my
views on the subject and my paper titled “Quantum Optics and its Applications” won the first prize.

I also leveraged my passion for cricket and writing by joining a sports’ website, Essentially Sports as an
editor. I became a part of a network of over 250 sports enthusiasts and actively participated in the
content management of the website. I had the crucial responsibility of editing and publishing articles,
viewed by hundreds of thousands of people every month around the globe. Apart from publishing news
and features, I was also conducting interviews, the range of which spanned from upcoming talents to
eminent sports’ personalities. Amongst my best and most prominent interviews, was the Olympic Gold
Medalist and former world number one badminton player, Carolina Marin. It was a transformative
experience for me to listen to her passionately talk about the game and the persistence required to
become the best at it; a quality that she shared with every sportsman whom I interviewed. Their
perseverance became a source of inspiration for me, in personal and professional fronts alike.

Throughout the four years of engineering, I undertook multiple projects in signal processing, robotics,
and VLSI design. I continued to participate in various technical fests round the country, presenting my
ideas and simultaneously getting exposed to radically new ones. I got the opportunity to interact with
notable academicians from the semiconductor industry and gradually, the vast scope of electronics
engineering became apparent to me. Working on projects, requiring multidimensional expertise from
various departments such as programming, circuit design, and mechanics, enabled me to deeply imbibe
the values of teamwork and coordination.

As I delved deeper into microelectronics, working on integrated chips in the lab, I was driven towards
this niche yet ubiquitous sector. The fact that transistors are at the heart of realization of every radical
idea, be it televisions or cell phones or the most sophisticated circuitry in space shuttles, motivated me
to join Samsung Semiconductor India R&D (SSIR) after graduation. My experience of working with an
R&D firm has propelled me to pursue a more scholarly research in electronics.

With the world already having been revolutionized by the power of Artificial Intelligence, I aspire to
conduct research in the fields blending circuit design with such advanced computing techniques. The
experienced faculty, modern infrastructure, and the avant-garde research groups at the University of
California, Los Angeles will enable me to pursue the ground-breaking research in the aforementioned
fields. I greatly look forward to being able to contribute to the endeavors at your university.