Student Stories

I have always had an insatiable curiosity for the sciences — something that was heightened by watching my sister deal with a myriad of health issues.

I grew up in Singapore, a city-state in Southeast Asia. My parents are from India, and visiting my grandparents who lived on small farms first sparked my interest in farming. An environmental science teacher at the high school I attended in Pennsylvania helped deepen that interest and I began considering studying agriculture.

In high school, I kept coming back to the question, “What can I do that will improve lives in a meaningful way?” The answer, for me, seemed to lie in food — everyone has to eat. I visited Purdue, where I found out about the Molecular Agriculture Summer Institute and the World Food Prize Youth Institute, which I attended while in high school. That was the first time I met other students with passions similar to mine.