Bio & Random (fun?) Stuff

If you are here, you probably want to know more about me. As I am a grad student (with a short bio) who doesn’t want to feel like a loser, I have made this section fairly long. Well, first things first - my name Nishanth means dawn / end of darkness in Sanskrit (Nishayaha Antaha).

I have just one name which is my first and given name. This is a common practise in some parts of India. However, this caused me issues when I came to the US - the Visa folks at the consulate gave me a new name - FNU Nishanth. FNU stands for First Name Unknown and Nishanth is my given name, which falls in my last name field. So, thanks in advance for not calling me FNU 😕

Note: For a more professional Bio and/or a CV (self aggrandizement), please drop me a message on LinkedIn or e-mail me at nishanth@wisc.edu. If you want a quick professional bio, see below:

Nishanth is a native of Mangalore, India. He received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA in 2020 and 2023 respectively. Nishanth was a research scholar in the machines and drives laboratory at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, supported by the GATE fellowship from the Govt. of India between 2016 - 2018. Between 2018 - 2023, he was a teaching and research assistant at the Wisconsin Electric Machines and Power Electronics Consortium (WEMPEC) at UW-Madison, where he is currently a post-doctoral researcher. In 2021, Nishanth pursued a research internship with the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Cambridge, MA, USA. His research interests include electric machine design, power electronics, and motor control, with a focus on power-dense designs. Nishanth is a recipient of the best electrical engineering project of the year 2015 award from the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Wisconsin Power Engineering Award from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2022.

Random stuff

I spent my childhood in the coastal city of Mangalore (Mangaluru) in the state of Karnataka on the western coast of India. Mangalore has several monickers including the cradle of indian banking, the ice-cream capital of India etc.

Mangalore is extremely diverse in terms of religion, culture, and languages. This has helped me to become fluent in several languages and acquire a flare for learning new languages. I can comfortably speak, read and write in English, Kannada, and Hindi. I can read and write in Sanskrit. I can also speak Konkani and Tulu (they do not have an official script), as well as comprehend Tamil and Telugu to a reasonable extent. My native language (the one I speak with family) is Konkani, of which I speak the Gaud Saraswat Brahmin dialect.

People who inspire me

One of my great-uncles, Prof. N.R. Kamath was a pioneering Chemical Engineer. He was the founding deputy director and chair of the chemical engineering department at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-Bombay). I have always looked up to his life and career for inspiration. His students have established a named professorship at IIT-Bombay in his memory. A youtube video about his life can be found here and some more material is here

Several people with origins from my hometown Mangalore have significantly contributed to electrical engineering (specifically power engineering). This includes Late Prof. Mangalore Anant Pai (M.A. Pai) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Prof. Jayant Baliga at NC State University (Inventor of the IGBT). They have never ceased to inspire me..

Hobbies

Since childhood, I haven’t been very athletic. I tried my hand at cricket and volleyball, but I was too bad. I used to spend the sports / physical education class hours in school, at the library or playing chess / board games. So, my hobbies too are the non-athletic sort: Reading, Philately, Numismatics, Hobby Projects, Cooking, Music, and Quizzing.

Reading

I used to be an avid reader (I am still a bibliophile) of Enid Blyton, Agatha Christie, Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon, Jack Higgins, and J.K. Rowling. Of late I don’t find much time to engage in reading. However, when I do, my Kindle likely won’t have battery charged up. If it does, I do read. I am working on a graduate student guide - a collection of my experience and experience of my colleagues in graduate school. I hope to publish it sometime in 2023 / 2024.

Philately and Numismatics

I started collecting stamps and coins at the age of 6, when a Norweigian friend of my grandparents’ (who was a M.K. Gandhi admirer) gifted me her collection of stamps with M.K. Gandhi on them from different countries across the world. To date I have approximately ten thousand stamps and approximately seven thousand coins + currency from over 40 countries.

Quizzing / Trivia

I was a proficient quizzer (trivia events in India) and participated (and won) over 30 quizzes in topics ranging from business, sports, science & technology right from school, through my undergraduate years. Some of the quizzes that I took part in include Tata crucible, TCS IT Quiz, and NITK Incident quiz. I have also hosted a few quizzes at corporates events and inter-college events in India.

Music

I am deeply interested in the Indian classical music. Hindustani / North Indian and Carnatic / South Indian are two variants of the Indian classical music. I was introduced to music at a very young age by my mother who is a trained Hindustani-violinist with several concerts to her credit. I started off training in Carnatic classical music at the age of 7 and continued until the age of 12. However, I couldn’t continue later. But to this day, I listen to Indian classical music (Hindustani and Carnatic) when I work - I find it really soothing. My favourite raga is the Hamsadhwani, which incidentally comes from the Carnatic variant.