Akshay Govindaraj
Name: Akshay Govindaraj
ID: CH12B076
Email id: akshaygvdrj@gmail.com
Temporary Residence: Godavari Hostel, IIT Madras
Educational Background:
Currently pursuing Dual Degree (B. Tech & M. Tech) in Chemical Engineering with minor in Physics at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai
Academic Interests:
Statistics, Partial Differential Equations, Modelling and Simulations, Process Intensification, Psychology.
About Me:
My family is originally from Tamil Nadu and moved to Bangalore when my grandfather was very young. My father, as well as myself, were born in Bangalore 30 years apart, and I lived much of my early childhood there as a part of our joint family, after which my father, mother and myself moved to Pune when I was 4 years old. I lived most of my life in Pune thereafter. I was always the average student throughout my school life that was more interested in computer games, watching football, surfing the internet and would study only because parents told me to. But a lot of it has changed after spending time in the institute and PRL. I feel privileged to have access to the institute tennis court, swimming pool, gym and other facilities for free, since that has helped me maintain the perfect work-life balance. I perfectly agree with Jim Rohn quote, “ You’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with” because I have experienced it first-hand. Working with the other members of PRL made me take a lot more personal responsibility for my work. I spend most of my free time reading books, newspapers, blogs etc. Some of my all-time favourite novels include A Song of Ice and Fire Series, The Kite Runner, Outliers and The marshmallow test. Although I try to read books from a wide range of genres, the one that stands out in my interests is Psychology. In fact I started attempting MOOCs on psychology to learn more about it. I like it particularly because it helps explain a lot about the behaviour of people around, understand them and their expectations and at the same time, it helps understand ourselves. After having learnt much about psychology I feel my subjective well-being has improved significantly. As someone who values learning a lot I always try to remind myself of Carl Sagan’s words, “We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.”