Researcher and writer, based in Calgary.
I build technology that helps people feel less alone in their struggles, and I write stories that do the same.
I came to computer science to build. I love the thrill of making something that solves a real problem. Somewhere in the last few years I realized what I most wanted to build for was connection: the plain relief of knowing you aren't the only one going through something.
In the summer of 2025 I got to act on that instinct. Working with Dr. Christian Jacob and Dr. Helen Ai He, I built Seeing Differently, an Apple Vision Pro app that simulates what common vision impairments actually feel like, moment to moment. At a public showcase, people with blind or low-vision family members told us it helped them understand something their loved one had never quite been able to put into words. That's the lesson I carried into Not Alone: some things can't be explained, only experienced.
It's also why the idea behind that project means something to me personally. I didn't come to the University of Calgary straight from high school. I got here after a diploma in Civil Engineering Technology at SAIT, and for a long time I felt like an impostor next to classmates I assumed had it more figured out than I did. Getting to know a lot of them, I learned most had felt exactly the same way. Psychologist Kristin Neff calls that recognition common humanity, and it's become the whole basis of my current work in the C3 Lab, the Not Alone project.
Away from the lab, I write. Poems, chapters, thoughts that can't be quieted. Sometimes I share them publicly, with the hope that others are able to see themselves in them.
Not Alone
Not Alone is a technology-mediated participatory art experience I'm leading with Dr. Helen Ai He in the C3 Lab, funded by an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award. Five 3D-printed skulls, each hiding a QR code, sit at locations across campus. Scanning one reveals a short, anonymous reflection on a struggle that's close to universal in university life — exam anxiety, a hard transition, feeling less capable than everyone around you — grounded in psychologist Kristin Neff's idea of "common humanity": recognizing that failure and hardship are part of being human, not proof you're uniquely behind. Before and after the hunt, participants answer the same short self-compassion questions, and can leave a reflection of their own. Anyone who finds all five is invited to an in-person sharing circle.
An SVG map that tracks progress in real time: filled skull markers for the stops you've found, a soft glow nudging you toward the next one, and animated footsteps tracing the path between them.
Scanning a marker deep-links you straight into its stop, quietly logs the scan, and reveals that location's quote.
Pre and post hunt surveys that ask how connected you feel, with an overlayed marker that reminds you of your previous answers right on the same scale.
Anyone can leave an anonymous quote of their own at each stop, and there's an open feedback form waiting at the end of the route.
Age and consent gating, an inline content warning with real crisis-line numbers, and a plain-link way to withdraw your data.
The whole experience is a single static file. Answers, quotes, and scans post quietly to Google Forms in the background, so it runs with zero server infrastructure.
A novel, in pieces
I'm writing a novel focused on what it's like to grow up as a first-generation immigrant in a South Asian household. It's in the early stages; I'll be sharing excerpts from it here in the future, and my hope is that it makes someone feel like they're seen, they're not crazy, and they're not alone.