Her Story
About Srirupa
My basic training was in physics - I completed my undergrad and master's in physics back in India at Presidency College and IIT. During my physics education, I came across the field of biophysics and how we could apply physics laws in solving grand challenges in biology. I did an internship in India at the Brain Research Institute, and I was fascinated by the fact that biology and physics, which do not seem to travel on parallel lines at all, could come close together so well. Several problems in biology have already been solved by applying the laws of physics. I was also always interested in computer programming, and the good confluence of everything - biology, physics, and data - leads to the application of physics-driven machine learning. The type of research I do is at very small scale, at the atomistic level. We use the computer like a virtual microscope so that we could look at it at an atomistic level and see exactly how the jigglings and wigglings of all these atoms lead to the behaviors of biology as well as biomedical solutions. Many of these cannot even be achieved through experiments, or if they can, they're extremely resource intensive. After my PhD in biophysics from the University at Buffalo in 2017, I worked at IBM Research, then at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and now I'm in a chemical engineering department. This shows that the type of research that goes on these days is so very interdisciplinary - chemical engineering, computer, biology, physics, all coming together.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Srirupa
01What do you attribute your success to?
I would say persistence. There are many fail points in everyone's journey. Some mentors very close to me told me that if you look at the CVs of failures - everybody's CVs show only the achievements, right? But if everybody were to draw up their CVs of failures, you know, grant applications they wrote that didn't go through, awards they applied for that didn't go through, interviews that they gave that didn't go through, those CVs can run longer. So I think persistence and not giving up has been key. It's like a puzzle - the more you just hold on to it, there will be a time when you will be able to solve it, and it's not just for the research, it's also for everything else you do in life. That has been a key motivator for me. I've gone through changes of continents, changes of settings of work, whether it's academia or industry or national labs. Throughout that, I've seen that this could be one continued learning moment for me. In fact, when I feel challenged now, I feel like if I could navigate those times where I was a new mom and navigating the entire challenge of being a new mom, I can do anything now.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice I received from mentors very close to me is about the CV of failures. They told me that in our careers, everybody's CVs show only the achievements, but if everybody were to draw up their CVs of failures - grant applications they wrote that didn't go through, awards they applied for that didn't go through, interviews that didn't go through - those CVs can run longer. This perspective helped me understand that persistence and not giving up is essential, because it's like a puzzle: the more you just hold on to it, there will be a time when you will be able to solve it.
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