Genome of India
What is the newsletter about?
India’s genome contains multitudes. This thought letter attempts to decipher it, base by base, by analyzing data using first principles. Every fortnight, I choose a topic I am interested in, look up the data and try to put it in context - for India.
Why am I writing this?
Newspapers and PrimeTime TV shows are full of experts explaining what is happening in India. However, a critical missing component of these opinions is the underlying statistics. A narrative coming from an expert (or a non-expert but being repeated enough times) often masquerades as “the fact” despite being pure fiction. Blanket statements are problematic and harmful. I am intrigued by India’s statistical architecture. Despite the popular narrative that there is too little data on any topic (health or otherwise) in India, I feel there is a wealth of data (including bad-quality data) as long as we look in the right places. But data and numbers can often be boring, unintelligible, and hard to communicate without context. I aim to critically engage with this data through a contextual lens to help interpret it without any ideological spin.
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Who am I?
I am currently a postdoc at the New York Genome Center, where I develop statistical and computational methods to understand how genes are regulated and how evolution has shaped the mechanism across different organisms to be the same or different.
Before this, I was a Ph.D. student at the University of Southern California (USC), where my work revolved around developing new computational methods to decipher the process of protein synthesis. I trained in Statistics and Computer Science while at USC. And before that, I studied Chemical Engineering at IIT Bombay.
Outside of work, I enjoy music, exploring the city's (NYC) food scene, and books. You can find me on Twitter @saketkc and my website.