I am an optical engineer with a background in computational materials science. I work across geometrical and physical optics — sequential ray tracing and lens design, aberration analysis, coherent Gaussian-beam optics, and thin-film photonic-stack modeling — in Python, Ansys Zemax OpticStudio, and whatever else the problem calls for. My approach to any optical problem is first-principles, bottom-up — building physical understanding from the ground up while keeping the bigger system picture in view. The aberration-theory white paper in Optics Essentials is an example of that mindset applied to a foundational topic. Recent projects that demonstrate the same approach end-to-end include optray, an open-source sequential ray tracer and lens-design library validated against Zemax on reference designs; a coherent FMCW LiDAR signal-chain simulation using Gaussian Beam Decomposition; an edge-emitting-laser-to-waveguide coupling design study; and a first-principles optical–thermal framework for passive radiative cooling emitters.

In my previous life, I was a computational materials scientist with over five years of postdoctoral research experience. I was a materials-science generalist — drawn to problems that link atomic, unit-cell, or crystal-level changes to observable property changes, regardless of which class of functional materials the problem happens to live in. My published work has spanned ferroelectrics and multiferroics, relaxor materials, polar topological states in thin films multiferroics, domain evolution and percolation in ferroelectrics using a toolkit that ranges from first-principles based Effective Hamiltonian Monte Carlo, Landau–Ginzburg–Devonshire theory, optical transfer-matrix methods.

My path started at IIT Kanpur, where I graduated with an Academic Gold Medal in Materials Science and Engineering. From there I moved to UNSW Sydney for my PhD with Prof. John Daniels, working on ferroelectric domains, their prediction, their evolution under external stimuli and their continuity in polycrystals — work that earned the Journal of the American Ceramic Society's Best Paper Award for 2020 and a cover feature. I then joined Prof. Laurent Bellaiche's Computational Condensed Matter Physics (CCMP) group at the University of Arkansas as a postdoctoral researcher, where I used Effective Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methods to study multiferroic BiFeO₃ thin films, polar topological states, and strain-induced magnetic and ferroelectric phenomena — often in close partnership with experimental groups at UNSW Sydney, UC Berkeley, IISc Bangalore, Paris Cité University, and the US Naval Research Laboratory. My current interests include EMW simulation in Passive Radiative Cooling emitters and LiDAR FMCW Systems.

My work has appeared in Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Advanced Materials, Acta Materialia, and other journals, and I have served as a peer reviewer for Nature Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, and Physical Review Letters. Most of my published research has lived in close contact with experiments — modeling to narrow hypotheses, explain puzzling observations, or point to new regimes worth exploring — and that's the kind of work I'm continuing to pursue.

Outside research, I write mystery fiction (six novels and counting) and I'm a certified barista from the Australian Barista School.