I was born in Varanasi (more popularly known as Benares or Kashi), India, roughly four decades ago. I grew up in Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), one of the northern Indian states (my father was a member of the U.P. state civil services). Though we lived in towns such as Allahabad, Sultanpur, and RaiBareilly, I consider myself pretty much from Lucknow, the state capitol of U.P., since that is where I spent most of my formative years.

Educationwise, I attended Lucknow University (1976-79, B.Sc. Physics/Math/Astronomy 1978), the University of Roorkee (1979-81, M.Sc., Physics 1981), West Virginia University (1981-84, M.S., Physics, 1983), and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1984-90, Ph.D., Astronomy 1990). Employmentwise, I was a postdoc in astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Summer 1990) and at the University of Arizona in Tucson (1990-93), a visiting postdoc in astronomy, a UNIX systems administrator in the chemistry, astronomy, and geology departments at Indiana University, Bloomington (1/94-8/95), and a senior UNIX systems programmer at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island (9/95-3/97). I am currently the manager of the Distributed Storage Services Group and an adjunct assistant professor in the Dept. of Astronomy at Indiana University-Bloomington.

I am also the thankful husband of Lisa Ensman, a Ph.D. astronomer currently on assignment as a full-time mom, and the proud father of two sweet boys she has given me: Dhruv Ryan Shankar (age 8) and Rajin David Shankar (age 4).

For more on how I met Dimitri Mihalas, the author of the Manic Depression Primer, go here.

next: A Manic Depression Primer: Preface