I am a National Science Foundation Synthetic Biology ERC Postdoctoral Fellow resident at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Studies. I received my PhD from MIT's Department of Political Science where I was a member of the Security Studies Program and the Program on Emerging Technologies. My research focuses on the role of leaders in organizational behavior and performance, international relations, and the management of innovation, science, and technology. My dissertation, The Paths of Glory: Structure, Selection, and Leaders, focuses on explaining the rise to power of “extreme” leaders who can have a very large impact on their organization's behavior or performance. It focuses particularly on heads of government but includes studies of figures in business, the military, and the sciences and draws on ideas from political science, economics, business, psychology, and finance. Other projects include the role of Disruptive Innovation in military success and failure, the social and political implications of Synthetic Biology, the role of status competition in international relations, and the situations and circumstances which foster innovation.

My work has been published in Security Studies, Politics and the Life Sciences, Parameters, and Systems and Synthetic Biology. I have been invited to speak on my research in both Europe and the United States. My research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, and theBioBricks Foundation. I am currently Vice-Chair of the National Science Foundation Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center's Student Leadership Council. I also serve as a member of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Mentorship Committee of Upakar, a national non-profit devoted to providing college scholarships to underprivileged Indian-American high school students. Before graduate school I was a consultant with McKinsey & Company in its New York Office, focusing in the pharmaceutical sector. I also founded the Two Rivers Group, a management consulting firm specializing in applying insight and expertise from the academic world to bear on the problems of the private sector.