I am a Civil Engineer turned Earth Science researcher, currently enrolled as a doctoral student at the Department of Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK). My broader area of research is application of remote sensing and GIS in fluvial geomorphology, particularly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) applications. After graduating as a civil engineer from Rajkiya Engineering College Ambedkar Nagar my post-graduate study at the Department of Earth Sciences, IITK, has been full of challenges and opportunities.

I worked on several exciting projects dealing with floods, sediment management, and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) applications in topographic and geomorphic surveys. My master’s dissertation under Prof. Rajiv Sinha was primarily the “Assessment and mapping of historical changes in the morphology of the river Ganga, identification of hotspots of siltation and their mapping by UAVs. My training as a master’s student in Earth Sciences has nurtured ansense of discipline, patience, and perseverance and has been rewarding and thoroughly exciting experience.

After completing my masters in 2018 I was employed as a Senior Project Associate on a World Bank-funded project dealing with historical time series morphological study of the Tawi river basin and developing an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model to identify the flood-prone areas. In the late 2018, I co-founded UAV based startup "TerrAqua UAV solutions" under Startup Incubation and Innovation Centre, IIT Kanpur.

A wide gamut of challenges and opportunities in Earth Sciences fascinated me to join IITK for my doctoral study in 2019.