I lived in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I moved to join the MFA in Studio Art program at UNC Greensboro. During the two years of my studies, the way I painted changed from working observationally to working from my imagination. My journey as a painter began when I took an introductory oil painting class at Fleisher Art Memorial, a community art center in Philadelphia. This was a major shift from molecular and cell biology, which is what I focused on during and after my undergraduate studies, but science is also a speculative process like painting and my past experience continues to inform my work today. I spent my childhood in Hamburg, Germany and Bangalore, India, before moving to Philadelphia. Before Greensboro, I was in Bangalore, and my time in the city—the architecture, the people, the stories—continues to be a strong presence in my work.