Sandpaper - The BITSAA Magazine

Profiles

Alum Team

Anupendra Sharma ('87) is Founder of a New York investment banking firm focused on Mergers, Acquisitions and Equity Financings. He worked as an investment banker in Technology M&A at JPMorgan and in Industrials Investment Banking at Salomon Smith Barney in New York. At BITS Anupendra was involved in the EDC, Sandpaper and the Music Club, was President of the Economics Association, and captain of his wing cricket team. He started Zero Deficit (Eco newsmag) and edited Cascade (instru mag). He holds an MBA from Cornell University (1998), Associate Chartered Management Accountant degree from England (1996), Masters in Accounting & Finance from the University of Manchester (1993), and dual degrees in MSc (Hons) in Economics & BE (Hons) in Instrumentation Engineering from BITS (1992). Anupendra lives near Princeton, New Jersey with his wife Rachna and son Rohan.

Dilip D'Souza ('76) A one-time dabbler in software, DD now writes for his lunches from Bombay. He graduated in EEE from BITS (1981), got himself a MS in CS from Brown University (1984) and did software in the States till 1992. But he thinks he found his calling when he began writing on his return to India that year. He now writes regularly for various papers and magazines, and has two books out from Penguin ("Branded by Law" and "The Narmada Dammed"). D is married to Vibha Kamat and they have a son, Sahir, born in 1999.

Nikhil Adnani ('88) is a research engineer by day and founder of the Groove Chamber by night. Combining his own talents with those of his friends and partners, Nikhil and the Groove Chamber have developed characters for the web like "Zemi" and "Chutney". He joined Pilani, but left for greener pastures halfway, and currently lives in Canada. He is married to Allison Evans Adnani.

Antara Bhattacharya ('96) graduated with an MS in Information Technology and MMS from BITS. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband.

Vikas Chandra ('94) is currently a Ph.D. student in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Prior to joining CMU, he briefly worked at the Central Research & Development division of the European semiconductor company, STMicroelectronics at Noida (India) and Crolles (France). Recently, he has developed an avid interest in photography and plans to do a picture-portrait of BITS sometime soon. He is involved with BITSAA academic council also. At BITS, he was involved with Hindi Press Club and Hindi Drama Club. Vikas holds a BE (Hons) in Instrumentation Engg (1998) from BITS and an MS in ECE from Carnegie Mellon University (2002). Vikas lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

Mukul Chawla ('93) is a software engineer at Cisco Systems in San Jose, CA,. Mukul works on software and hardware (ASIC) development for unicast, multicast IP routing and forwarding on the "Catalyst" router product line. Mukul also participated in setting up Cisco's India R&D Center by starting an engineering team in Bangalore. Mukul was co-founder of UnivApp, an e-learning venture based in Seattle. At BITS, Mukul was elected to the executive committee of BITSAA, was co-editor of Cactus Flower '96 and worked as Editor, Coordinator & Volunteer in the EPC, Oasis & BOSM English Press. As an alum, he delivered a talk on "Multimedia Networks: Open Problems & Challenges" at BITS in 1998. Mukul holds an MSc (Tech) in Information Systems from BITS (1997), where he graduated at the top of his class and an MS in Computer Science from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1999), where his MS thesis on multimedia networks was nominated for the David J Kuck outstanding computer science thesis award. Mukul lives in Santa Clara, CA.

Ashish Garg ('97) graduated this quarter with an MS EE degree from UC Santa Barbara
(2003) and has a BE (Hons) E&I from BITS (2001). Was the Instru co-ord for APOGEE
2000, member of Department of Controlz, President of Sangam and also a member of the Election Commission. In 2000, he led the effort to computerize voting for the Student's Union elections. Ashish lives in Palo Alto, CA.

Anuradha Gupta ('86) (now Gupta) did MMS at Pilani (86-90) and then MBA (International Business) at IIFT, Delhi (90-92). She worked with Hindustan Lever for 7 years, taught International Business briefly at SP Jain, was Project Director with IMRB and had another stint at marketing at an IT company in Greenwich, USA followed by a much needed sabbatical. She is married to Pankaj Gupta, a CA, CPA who worked with Levers and is now CFO of Zirh International, Manhattan. They have a 3 and a half year old daughter, Tannu and Anuradha is busy with her hobbies, yoga, meditation, writing (she is in the process of getting her third book published) and her most challenging and fun project - her daughter.

Sagarika Jaganathan ('93) is currently pursuing her masters in Journalism in the Bay Area, focusing on public interest writing while working for her university's career center. She has 4+ years of writing and editing experience working in the IT sector. She had a brief stint with ELAS, and won the Valentine's Day poetry contest held by the Languages Association of BITS with her poem, "Man of my dreams," which eventually lead her to husband Sri. Sagarika turned down an admission to Chemical at BITS to pursue an engineering degree in Coimbatore, but quit after a semester to return to Pilani in winter 1994. She holds an MSc.(Hons)in Biological Sciences and a diploma in technical writing. Sagarika lives in Mountain View, CA, with husband Srivatsan and daughter Vidusha."

Sabyasachi Kar ('97) is currently doing his MBA at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Prior to that he was a product manager at Lucent Technologies in Boston working on convergence products for European and Japanese clients. Sabya holds an BE (Hons) in Instrumentation from BITS (1997) and an MS in Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston(2003).

Aanand Krishnan ('95) has been with the Fiber Optics division at Agilent Technologies in the Bay Area since June '01. He holds an MS EE from UC Santa Barbara (2001) and BE (Hons) EE from BITS (1999).

Sandeep Mukherjee (’95) is a Process Design Specialist at Nationwide Financial Services in Columbus, OH. Sandeep works on Six Sigma Black Belt projects and on the deployment of Lean Manufacturing principles. He is also a volunteer with the Columbus Literacy Council. At BITS, Sandeep was Joint Secretary of the English Press Club and on the Editorial Teams of Cactus Flower and Sandpaper. He also worked in the Department of Publications and Correspondence for OASIS ’96-97. He holds an MS in Industrial and Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University and dual degrees in MSc (Hons) Physics and BE (Hons) Mechanical Engineering from BITS. Sandeep lives in Columbus, OH.

Venu Palaparthi ('87) is Vice President of Business Audit and Risk Assurance at Instinet, an electronic agency broker owned by Reuters in New York City. Venu previously worked at Reuters in marketing strategy, post-acquisition integration planning, audit, operational review, and fixed income analytics. At BITS, Venu lived backstage and worked on or managed over a dozen stage productions. This effectively halved his CGPA between his first year at BITS and final year. Venu holds an MBA in Finance from University of Texas at Arlington (1994), and holds dual degrees in Economics and Computer Science from BITS (1992). Venu is Series 7 and Series 63 registered. Venu lives in Hillsborough, NJ, with his wife Kranthi who calls herself "a BITSIAN by marriage."

Suraj Srinivasan ('86) is a PhD student in Accounting at Harvard Business School. Suraj resides in Cambridge, MA with his wife and son. Suraj was President of the Student Union at BITS.

Pushkala Venkatraman ('95) is currently pursuing an MS in Information Systems at New Jersey Institute of Technology. After having passed out of BITS in the year 1999 she worked for some years before coming to the US to study. At BITS, she worked for EPC and Oasis English Press and was active in other organizations like PTM. After BITS wrote occasionally for magazines and papers. Pushkala now lives in New Jersey with her husband Vijay. Pushkala hold an MMS from BITS (1999).

Pilani Team

Chandy John Benjamin, ID No. 2001A8B5040 is a fourth year student who is right now doing his physics CDCs. From Cochin, Kerala, he is interested in anything that involves a practical application of physics. He reads anything he thinks would make a good read and also writes on similar lines. He has been part of the Department of Backstage, and is now a senior core member for Oasis 2004. He is also currently serving as treasurer for the regional association, Kairali.

Gaurav Verma bearing ID No. 2002B4TS895 is a third year student of M.Sc. (Hons) Mathematics. Belonging to Mathura, Uttar Pradesh he is interested in reading books, “computing” and in music. He is interested in web designing and was a part of the APOGEE 2004 website team. He was also an intern in the Centre for Software Development in ASP. NET and a member of Sangam in his first year. He is now a member of newly founded Mourya Vihar.

Ramya Satyam P., bearing ID No. 2002A2PS678 third year student of Civil engineering. She is from Hyderabad and is interested in table tennis, sketching, painting, and in playing the keyboard. She has been the captain for the Table Tennis team for BOSM 2003. She has been working as an intern in Centre for Software Development (CSD) for over a year as at present. She is also working as a PA at Practice School Division (PSD) on .NET projects. She is a core member and Coordinator of Creative activities club (CRAC) for OASIS 2004 and the Joint Coordinator for the Civil Engineering Association for APOGEE 2005. At CSD, she worked on multimedia part of the websites like Intrabits and now working on Virtual University.

Anuj Prateek, a physics student bearing the ID No. 2003B5TS883 is from Lucknow. His main interests are in physics and computers and aims in research work in Unification Theory and Application of Relativity in Development of Computers. He is also interested in poetry, table tennis and horse riding. He heads the NSS medical camps and is working as professional assistant for Computer Programming-I.

B. Imtiazuddin Ahmed bearing Id No. 2002A4A7373 is currently doing his third year in mechanical engineering, with a dual in Computer Science. He is from Chittoor in Andhra Pradesh. He is a senior member of CRAC (Creative Activities Club) and a Bosm player in tennis and athletics.He has been also working with CSD for the past two years, and has designed websites like Intrabits, MEA etc.

Divya Divakaran, ID No. 2001A8PS257 is doing her final year of graduation in Electronics & Instrumentation, graduating in June, 2005. Though a Keralite by origin, has been born and brought up in Bangalore. She is a member of the Department of Controlz and very recently of the English Drama Club, having acted in a play in her final semester on campus! Loves reading books, travel, and learning new things.

Himabindu Chitta, bearing Id No. 2002B2A7508 is in her third year, and is doing Chemistry with Computer Science. She is a member of the Department of Controlz, as well as the English Press Club and the Cactus Flower team. She loves to read, write, and eat watermelons. One usually finds her watching Cary Grant movies or listening to music by Simon and Garfunkel. Newest interests include studying the stock market.