I am from Kolkata. Our house is in Behala in South Kolkata. I am the younger of two sisters. My father, Shri. Ashim Kumar Sen, was an officer in Bank of India and retired in 2003. My mother, Smt. Mitali Sen, is a teacher of social science group in a government school. My elder sister, Rituparna Sen, is Assisstant Professor of Statistics in University of California, Davis. She has a beautiful five year old daughter Brishti. My brother in law, Prabuddha Chakraborty, is doing post doc in solid state physics in Auxburg University in Germany.
I did B.E. in computer science from Jadavpur University in Kolkata and worked in an EDA startup in Noida for one year. Then I came for M.Tech in IIT Bombay. Having heard sister and other cousins talk enthusiastically about research -- the topics varying all the way from financial probability, cancer cells, nervous systems in plants, abstract algebra, network coding, condensed matter to approximation algorithms, made me wonder about what research is. On the other hand, I was unwilling to go abroad as others in my family, mainly for three reasons - boyfriend refused to go :-), sister was settled in California and parents are growing old. Cousin Sayandeep, currently doing PhD in Wisconsin Madison in computer networks, spoke highly about Prof. Bhaskaran Raman, under whom he had done M.Tech thesis. I took Prof. Bhaskar's course in first semester of M.Tech and loved his way of teaching. I decided to convert my M.tech into a PhD under him and did so after first semester. The goal of doing a PhD for me is not to get the degree or to solve some nice problem or to have some great publications or to grab a good job. Till now, I have just read books and written exams. In course of PhD, I want to learn the process of research. If I see I am good at it, I can plan to join academics in future. In case I am bad at it, I'll join some office and do what my manager asks me to do :-)