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125<h1 id="i-may-not-be-leftlangle-etxrightrangle-but-i-have-my-moments">I may not be <span class="notranslate"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment-generating_function">$\left\langle e^{tx}\right\rangle$</a></span>, but I have my moments…</h1>
126
127<figure>
128    <img class="responsiveimage" src="/images/me.png" style="width: 40%;" />
129    <figcaption class="customcaption">Me discovering that I like Matcha green tea ice cream</figcaption>
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131
132<p>I currently live in Fremont, CA and I’m a researcher in the semiconductor industry.
133If you go back far enough, I’m originally from Bengaluru, India but I’ve done a bit of bouncing between the south and the west of India while growing up. 
134I was born in Bangalore, but grew up in Pune and I’ve now established roots back in Bengaluru again (yep, the name actually changed in the time that I was gone).</p>
135
136<p>I’m a sucker for all things applied math, and my <a href="https://siddharth-maddali.github.io/professional/cv#workex">career trajectory</a> in scientific research has been fairly consistent ever since high school, even though I now work in the private sector.</p>
137
138<p>My broad area of expertise is computational imaging and materials science which happen to be highly inter-disciplinary fields. 
139I spend most of my time figuring out new ways to image things down to a few nanometers by shining light on them.
140Being able to see what bunches of atoms are doing (a few thousand in a bunch) without destroying what you’re looking at is important if you’re a scientist or an engineer designing a new material, or just trying to understand materials better.
141This includes people who want to make sure their computer chips have no flaws, design new alloys see how they will behave when you strain or heat them, or scientists studying battery cathodes or catalytic particles in action.</p>
142
143<figure>
144    <img class="responsiveimage" src="/images/cp1.jpg" style="width: 40%;" />
145    <figcaption class="customcaption">Mildly vandalized stone marker at the burial site of CP-1</figcaption>
146</figure>
147
148<p>I spent the early years doing such things at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, IL. 
149It is one of the best places for materials research owing to their <a href="https://www.aps.anl.gov/About/Overview">giant X-ray machine</a>, for which I designed new X-ray imaging methods.
150A lot of this work was me sitting at a desk simulating such diffraction experiments for different materials, with the occasional week-long experiment at the Advanced Photon Source.
151I absolutely relish the opportunity to have worked in such a field that involves using a wide range of skills.
152This is in fact a very exciting, dynamic area of research, and <a href="https://www.aps.anl.gov/APS-Upgrade/News/DOE-approves-technical-plan-and-cost-estimate-to-upgrade-Argonne-facility">it’s only going to get better</a> in the future.</p>
153
154<p>I was also a post-doc at the National Energy Technology Laboratory in Pittsburgh, PA, where I worked on materials discovery using machine learning.</p>
155
156<p><strong>Trivia fragment #1</strong>: the world’s first ever nuclear reactor (Chicago Pile-1) is buried somewhere on <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/red-gate-woods">the old site of the laboratory</a>.</p>
157
158<p><strong>Trivia fragment #2</strong>: the X-ray beam at Argonne is so carefully aligned that it is sensitive to <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/argonne/32879127374">earthquakes at the other end of the world</a>.</p>
159
160<p><strong>Trivia fragment #3</strong>: My <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s_number">Erdős number</a> is 5. 
161However, I might have lost my chance at an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number">Erdős-Bacon number</a>: I didn’t try hard enough to be an extra in <i>The Dark Knight Rises</i> that was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpw0ajm3_5k">filmed in Pittsburgh</a> back when I was in grad school. 
162Still, it was nice to see downtown Pittsburgh and the Carnegie Mellon University campus briefly dressed up as Gotham City.</p>
163
164<p><a name="noseriously"></a>
165At other times, I’m usually playing squash, swimming, looking to learn new math and physics stuff completely orthogonal to my work, trying to achieve Linux supremacy and automate my life, contributing to open-source software or drinking new beers I come across (after all, I am a Bangalorean!).
166I am a big fan of the great outdoors and have absolutely loved every single one of my hikes, treks and visits to national and state parks around the US.
167I am appropriately wary of social media but nevertheless get my daily internet fix through a variety of aggregators. 
168The ones I used to favor have been taken over by thin-skinned billionaires sporting an infinitesimal knowledge of free speech and s

168ocial media. 
169I occasionally post stuff that align with my interests, but <font color="red"><strong>don't bother looking for me on Facebook, Instagram or Tik-Tok</strong></font>.</p>
170
171<p>My wife <span class="notranslate">Ranjini</span> is from Kochi, India, a mathematician by training, data scientist by trade and Carnatic music enthusiast.
172We met in Chennai as students way back in 2007.
173We have two kids, <span class="notranslate">Sattva</span> and <span class="notranslate">Kedar</span>.</p>
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