"I have always been curious about trying to understand the science that underlies the meditation practices." - Abhijit Suresh

Name: Abhijit Suresh
Hometown: Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India
Advisors: R. McKell Carter (Neuroscience) and Michael Moser (Social Neuroscience and Games (SNaG) Lab)

My Path to Engineering

I grew up in the city of Coimbatore in the southern part of India. During my school days, I was fascinated by robots and how they work. I wanted to create a humanoid than can break through singularity and think like humans. I believe that the most challenging part of doing that is to understand how the human brains work.

Hailing from an orthodox brahmin family, I was introduced to meditation when I was very young. It was not only integrated with my 10 years of schooling but was also a part of undergrad program. I have always been curious about trying to understand the science that underlies the meditation practices. Since the circumstances did not favor me to pursue a career as a neuroscientist, I chose to study computer science. Over the years, I started exploring different subfields such as natural language processing, swarm intelligence, and neural networks. I enjoyed doing research and was eager to learn more. In an abstract way, my research interest can be described in a single term: machine learning.

Why CU Boulder?

During the senior year of my undergrad program, I started thinking about applying to different graduate schools to explore my interest in machine learning. I decided to take a break before applying for graduate school. I worked as a software developer for Siemens for a year. Although I enjoyed working, it was very repetitive and did not motivate me to learn new skills. That is when I realized that I was more cut out for research than working in the industry.

I applied for the master’s program to eight different graduate schools including CU Boulder (fall 2015). It was a no-brainer to choose CU over other universities when I received an admit. CU has an amazing program for both computer science and neuroscience. The term “amazing” is defined based on the professors, research publications, grants and national ranking.

After a year of my master’s program, I converted my masters to PhD. I felt very confident about finding the right advisor and lab to conduct my research. I’m currently working at the social neuroscience and games lab with Prof. McKell Carter analyzing fMRI or functional magnetic resonance imaging to compare brain states and cluster voxels that are specific to certain behavior. Ideally, I would be extending this technique to compare brain in normal state vs. meditative state. I’m also advised by Prof. Michael Mozer from computer science. I’m enrolled in the triple PhD program majoring in computer science, neuroscience and cognitive science. It is a multi-disciplinary program offered by the Institute of Cognitive Science at University of Colorado Boulder. My research in machine learning and meditation very much aligns with the programs offered at the institute.

I love CU for more than one reason. There are different aspects to it. From the academic side, with professors like Michael Mozer who have been working with machine learning for more than 25 years, research is substantially productive. Rather than spending time on trivial things, I often end up spending time on challenging problems. The professors are very approachable and promote collaboration. The university provides plenty of resources. The academic program is designed in such a way that it promotes learning through projects and hands-on experience with software tools. You have the freedom to choose your courses from the different departments.

Besides academics, Boulder is a college town with plenty of outdoor activities such as hiking, biking and skiing It is always bustling with life and make you feel at home. The air is clean and there is a lot of greenery providing a healthy environment. The commuting is never a problem with buses to and from the airport and also within the town. You also have a wide variety of cuisines and food courts on campus which makes it easier to grab and go. There is always some event going on campus where you can participate. Also, we have an active graduate student association which plans events through the academic year (including the summer). The people are very welcoming and you end up having a lot of friends. My life at CU is all about work-life balance and the mountains!