As a brief background, I grew up at a Himalayan boarding school, where the Indian wildlife first sparked my interest in biology. After completing a quadruple-major in microbiology, chemistry, genetics, and biophysics in college, I earned my Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University. My Ph.D. thesis explored the development of sympathetic neurons, particularly in axon targeting and final target innervation, identifying key proteins such as Wnts and its receptor, and resulting in multiple publications including a first author paper. My post-doctoral research focused on the effects of anesthetic toxicity on brain development using sophisticated retroviral system with stereotactic injections of the virus into the dentate gyrus. We identified that anesthetic exposure has detrimental lasting effect on dendritic spine maturation mediated through the mTOR pathway, which can be rescued with mTOR inhibitor rapamycin. My post-doctoral work was prolific, with multiple high impact, peer-reviewed publications, including first author papers. Following my post-doctoral fellowship, I attended medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and completed residency at New York Presbyterian – Columbia University Irving Medical Center.