personal: biography

I was born in New Delhi, approximately on March 20th, 1964.

I had a long and more or less uneventful -- unless one counts regular beatings for insubordination by the dreaded Brother John Bennett -- schooling in St. Columba's School. At Columba's I got a real good education; this did not register in my mind until much later.

I got done with school in 1983, but I did very badly in my final exams because I had become quite sick by the time the exams came around. I started university in 1983 (economics honours at Delhi University) but had to quit in 1984 because of kidney failure. I got a kidney transplant in 1985 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi (my father gave me a kidney).

In 1986 I re-started my life by enrolling in a BA in Japanese at JNU, Delhi; I took French and Western Philosophy as minors. I did well (Japanese is fun!) and got a scholarship to study in Japan from MEXT (previously known as the Mombusho). I ended up spending a total of five very pleasant years in Osaka (the beautiful city of Minoh) and Nishinomiya, studying at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies and later at Osaka University, where I studied with Gunji Takao. In between, 1990-1992, I worked as an in-house patent translator in a law firm in Osaka (Japanese to English). You can find some photos of my time in Japan here.

In 1997, I left Osaka and I went to the US to do a PhD at Ohio State, in Linguistics. In 2002 I graduated with a PhD in linguistics and an MS in computer and information science. I did my PhD with Rick Lewis, then in CSE, and Shari Speer, who had just arrived in Linguistics from Kansas. My academic genealogy (clearly incomplete, partly since I am counting only my primary PhD advisor) is: Richard Lewis-Allen Newell-Herb Simon-Henry Schultz and Rudolph Carnap-Henry Moore.

The post-PhD years have been something of a blur. The historical record shows that I did a postdoc of sorts in Computational Linguistics at the University of Saarland (2002-2004). After that, I began a non-tenure track assistant professorship at Potsdam (August 2004-September 2008). As of October 1st 2008 I am full professor of linguistics and chair of psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics (language processing) at the University of Potsdam. In essence, I'm living out the American Dream, but it's Made in Germany.

I have several interests outside of work (although I don't really consider work work).
I played the violin for many years (photo of a concert in Japan), but I gave it up eventually for lack of time. Nowadays I play the guitar, which I am taking regular lessons for from Michael Kornmacher, a truly outstanding teacher. You can hear the results of my exertions here. I have also been involved since 1991 in a Japanese martial art, Iaido; I currently hold the rank of 3rd Dan. Recently, my teachers Fukuhara sensei (8th Dan) and his student Shirai sensei (7th Dan) brought out a three-DVD set, demonstrating the Musoshindenjushinryu koryu kata. This is probably the only record on film of the Musoshindenjushin style kata in existence today. The DVDs are well worth studying, but they're not for the beginner (explanations are in Japanese though, and it may be helpful to be familiar with the Kansai dialect). The koryu kata are so spectacular, however, that just watching this great master swordsman demonstrate them is worth it. Fukuhara sensei used to be a wholesale vegetable dealer in Nishinomiya, until the 1995 earthquake destroyed his shop and home. He lived in an old style house which also doubled as his place of business. He gave up his business (well, nothing was left) and has focused on Iaido since then. You can see some old photos of me doing Iaido here:

Another interest is hanging out with my family on weekends: