experience

Meteorological and oceanographic officer, Indian Navy, July 2001 to January 2022. Retired as Commander.

  1. Jun 2018 to Jan 2022

    Director, Meteorological and Oceanographic Data Analysis Centre

    Headquarters Southern Naval Command, Kochi

    • Led a centre of 60 to 70 oceanographers, meteorologists, data scientists, software engineers and numerical modellers running WRF-ARW, MOM6 and WaveWatch-III for the fleet.
    • Integrated 3DVAR assimilation of ship and land observations into WRF, improving forecast skill by 10 to 20%.
    • Held an annual budget of INR 40 to 50 crore and secured INR 11 crore for in-house high-performance computing.
    • Coordinated naval relief forecasting in the Kerala floods (2018) and advised the National Disaster Response Force during Cyclone Pabuk (2019).

  2. Jul 2016 to Jun 2018

    Command Meteorological and Oceanographic Officer, Operations Planning

    Headquarters Andaman and Nicobar Command, Port Blair

    • Gave daily forecast briefings to the Commander-in-Chief and to army, navy and air force commanders.
    • Directed a CNN-LSTM rainfall model, a radar and sonar performance model, and a wave-height downscaling model used for the tow and mooring of floating docks.
    • Managed the technical programme for MILAN, a fifteen-nation naval exercise.

  3. Apr 2014 to Jul 2016

    Head, Department of Meteorology

    Naval Air Station Port Blair

    • Led a 40-person aviation forecasting department serving military and civil flights across the Bay of Bengal and the Strait of Malacca.
    • Built a support vector machine (SVM) crosswind prediction model from a 30-year record.

  4. Oct 2012 to Apr 2014

    Staff Officer (Meteorology and Oceanography)

    Headquarters Western Naval Command, Mumbai

    • Forecasting for fleet deployments across the Arabian Sea, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
    • Managed the installation of upper-air sounding systems on 20 warships (INR 7 crore).

  5. Apr 2010 to Oct 2012

    Senior Meteorological Officer

    INS Viraat (aircraft carrier), Mumbai

  6. Oct 2003 to Apr 2010

    Meteorological Officer, successive appointments

    Goa; INS Mysore, Mumbai and Delhi; NAS Arakkonam; INS Parundu; Visakhapatnam

    • Built a hybrid WRF and Random Forest thunderstorm and fog model at Visakhapatnam.

  7. Jul 2001 to Sep 2003

    Commissioned; Advanced Meteorology Course

    India Meteorological Department, Pune, and New Delhi

As Parade Commander, escorting the Lt Governor, Lt Gen A K Singh (Retd), during the parade inspection, Independence Day, Netaji Stadium, Port Blair, 15 August 2014.
As Parade Commander, escorting the Lt Governor, Lt Gen A K Singh (Retd), during the parade inspection, Independence Day, Netaji Stadium, Port Blair, 15 August 2014. Photo: Directorate of IP&T, Andaman and Nicobar Administration (archived copy).

honours

education

  1. 2022 to 2027 (defence expected February 2027)

    PhD, Earth and Planetary Sciences

    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

    Dissertation: Scientific machine learning for plankton dynamics from multi-decadal ocean-colour observations

  2. 2024

    MA, Earth and Planetary Sciences

    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

  3. 2014 to 2015

    Technical Staff Officers Course

    Defence Institute of Advanced Technology, Pune

  4. 2001 to 2002

    Advanced Meteorology Course

    India Meteorological Department, Pune

  5. 1996 to 2000

    BE, Electrical Engineering

    National Institute of Technology, Durgapur