About me
I was born in India in 1946, one year before she gained her independence. My granduncle was a freedom fighter, who died as a result of injuries suffered, while leading a non-violent procession in the Punjabi city of Lahore (now in Pakistan), in 1928. I was raised in the central province of Madhya Pradesh and studied at the Indian Institute of Technology – Kharagpur near Kolkata during 1962-67.
I was accepted by Professor Eugene Hill as a graduate student, and completed my MS from the University of New Brunswick in Canada in 1969. Upon graduating, I decided to pursue my PhD and was given an opportunity to do so by Professor Harold A. Peterson at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. During the course of my studies in electrical engineering, I became interested in thorium-based nuclear reactors that led to an MS in Nuclear Engineering in 1972. I graduated with a PhD in EE in 1973. During 1973-1975, I studied as a post-doc under Professor Harold Peterson and Professor Roger Boom on superconducting magnetic energy storage in power systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
In 1976, I was recruited by my mentor Professor Vernon D. Albertson to teach as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where I have been ever since. I became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1982. My wife, Mary, who I met in 1970 during my college years at UW-Madison, and I have two grown-up children.