Philosophical Musings & Hobbies

My philosophy towards research (and life) is heavily influenced by minimalism, Taoist beliefs and the slow science movement. Common to all three is the intrinsic belief of “utility in simplicity“, i.e., that the meaning of life, science and the creative arts is to capture the key essence of the world around us in order to further human understanding. This core belief is the underlying reason behind my interest in information theory as well as my hobbies (writing and dance).

Indeed, the above belief forms the bedrock of information theory – watch this inspiring talk by David Tse (transcript available here) on the spirit of the field. At its core, information theory answers big system-level questions (e.g., how to reliably send data from point A to B?) by studying simple mathematical models that are complex enough to model the phenomenon at hand and are yet simple enough to be analytically tractable (e.g., Gaussian point-to-point channel).

Paraphrasing David Tse and Bob Gallager, a good information theoretic paper must prune the knowledge tree by unifying existing results and shedding new light on some hitherto unexplored aspect of the system being analyzed. Some of my favorite information theory books and papers that encapsulate this idea well are –

Information Theory and Coding by Norm Abramson – an underrated gem of a textbook on the topic by the inventor of ALOHA. Unlike traditional math-heavy expositions on the topic, this book captures the high-level essence of the field via lucid examples and intuitive explanations. I was fortunate to stumble upon this book by accident during my undergraduate studies, and have been hooked ever since.

Fundamentals of Wireless Communication by David Tse and Pramod Viswanath – although not technically an information theory book, it is a perfect example of the power of an information theoretic understanding of (wireless) systems.

Diversity and Multiplexing: A Fundamental Tradeoff in Multiple-Antenna Channels by Lizhong Zheng and David Tse – among my favorite papers by David Tse that unified the two types of gains possible with multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) wireless systems.

Blind Interference Alignment by Syed Jafar – among my favorite papers by Syed Jafar that showed that it is possible to combat interference in wireless networks without requiring knowledge of channel coefficients at transmitters, given knowledge of the channel coherence patterns alone. See this page for a more detailed illustration of the idea.

My philosophical beliefs have also strongly influenced my choice of hobbies (writing and dance).

Writing (Literary & Scientific)

I have been a lifelong writer; I have written numerous short stories and poems over the years (and a fantasy novella during high school). My intrinsic desire for simplicity has recently led me towards writing short form Japanese haikai poetry (haiku, tanka and haiga) – check out some of my published poetry here. Much like information theory, the goal of haikai poetry is to (attempt to) capture the beauty of the world in as few words as possible. Surprisingly, I have found the constraints of haikai poetry to be a lot more creatively liberating as compared to traditional exposition-heavy Western poetry or prose.

Alongside haikai poetry, I have also always admired the elegance of well-written popular science books – some of my favorite popular science authors include James Gleick, Oliver Sacks and V.S. Ramachandran. I have only recently begun my journey into the amazing world of science writing and communication – check out some of my science journalism themed blog posts here. I was also a participant and volunteer at ComSciCon Houston 2020, and I am a member of the Massive Science Consortium.

Social Dancing

My desire for simplicity and elegance has also led me to express myself via dance. I’m extremely passionate about Latin social dancing (salsa, bachata and zouk); I have also recently begun my journey as a salsa instructor at Rice Salseros. I’m always looking to expand my dance horizons (say, to ballroom, Bollywood or country!), so feel free to teach me some moves from your favorite dance form 🙂