About Me

You can follow me on LinkedIn and Instagram. Here is a timeline of my life so far:

1993Born and raised in Kochi, Kerala in South India
2011Ranked in the 99.99 percentile in India and joined IIT Bombay at age 17
2014Visited the US for a paid internship and published first paper at age 19
2015Moved to the US at age 21 to pursue Masters + PhD in Astrophysics at UIUC
2016Pioneered AI in Astrophysics and won $90,000 in fellowships and awards
2017Figured out how to work earning $140k/year while doing PhD on F-1 visa
2017Co-authored 80+ publications with 50,000 citations (1000+ as first-author)
2018Got MS at age 23 and finished PhD in record one year at age 24
2018Hired by Google X in Silicon Valley as an AI scientist to build moonshots
2019Met my future wife at Google X (also an AI scientist who got her PhD at 25)
2019Started investing and trading stocks, made over 100% returns in one year
2020Hired by JPMorgan, the biggest firm on Wall Street, as VP at age 26
2020Began traveling and living in hotels with my wife while working remotely
2021Got rid of all my possessions except for 10lb (4.5kg) of stuff in one backpack
2021Started hacking points and hotel statuses (saving $100,000 over 3 years)
2021Reached my first $1 million in after-tax savings at age 27
2022Refused Green Card, became a US non-resident and sold stocks for $0 taxes
2022Awarded the extraordinary ability O-1 visa to work in the US
2023Lived in hotels full-time for 3 years in 27 countries, spending < $35,000/year
2023“Retired” at age 29 after reaching financial independence (FIRE)
2023Became CEO of an AI startup that I co-founded with 3 of my friends
2024Moved back to Silicon Valley and raised ~$6M seed at $60M valuation

Pics

This is what ChatGPT thinks I look like given a link to this blog as the prompt (which is surprisingly quite accurate except that my backpack is smaller in real life).

What ChatGPT thinks Dr. Hacker Nomad looks like given a link to drhackernomad.com as the prompt