Profile

I live in York in a rented apartment.  I have had the chance to live with so many people from different countries (US, Italy, Japan, China, Netherlands, Denmark) which makes my Ph.D. stay memorable. I like hanging out a lot, visit random places, random dinners and I consider myself to be very spontaneous. At the moment, I am a part of the Latin American society in York and have been learning to dance salsa and other Latin-American dances. I am also teaching myself little bit of Spanish. I was part of the hiking society in York University but lasted only one trip because it proved too tough for me. I  am working on my fitness now by playing  football regularly and hopefully I will get back into shape soon. I also watch lots of cartoons, the recent ones being Dragonball Super and Naruto.  In my free time, I like surfing on youtube and take interest in politics.

With almost 9 billion people expected to live on our planet after 2035,  demand for important food grains such as rice will be high. We need to increase the productivity of existing agriculture land under a climate that is changing. Variation in climate is predicted to increase in the future, with negative impacts for crops that are dependent on natural rainfall (‘rainfed agriculture’). Given that many crops grown under rainfed (i.e. non-irrigated) conditions support the livelihoods of low-income farmers and contribute significantly to  food security, it is important to highlight the risk to rainfed areas to climate change in order to anticipate potential risks to food security. My Ph.D. thesis is a part of BBSRC-funded collaborative ‘SCPRID’ project titled “Using wild ancestor plants to make rice more resilient to increasingly unpredictable water availability”. The objective of this project is to use modern breeding tools to develop new rice varieties with improved yield and drought tolerance for the rainfed areas in India.  My Ph.D. thesis focuses on quantifying the impacts of climate change on rainfed rice productivity and assessing the new rice varieties for their ability to compensate for the loss of yield expected in the future. My work in particular will be useful for policy makers for them to prioritise locations where rainfed rice is at most risk from climate change and will aid the scientific community on the type of varieties that needs to be developed for meeting future crop demand.

I usually get up late (9 am) and try to reach the University around 10 am. I start my day with writing down things I need to do on that day which usually includes reading a paper, doing some analysis, writing a report, or teaching undergraduates. I also look at my calendar for any meeting scheduled. I break for lunch around 1 and have lunch with my lab colleagues and we discuss each other’s day and have bit of laugh. Than I go for a small walk around my campus (which has a beautiful lake) and come back to my desk to start working around 2 pm. I work till 6-7 pm with intermittent short breaks. Around 7, I have my dinner and than I go out to meet my friends or go to my dance classes or play football. I get home around 10 and than I watch some thing on youtube and go to sleep.