Crossing over
Closer to graduating than to my first day: on Mumbai, fruit flies, and how each part of my life keeps ending up in the others.
Read postAbout
Hi, I'm Tia.
Genetics student. Fruit fly wrangler. The biology person on tech teams. Self-appointed chef and occasional painter.
I grew up in Mumbai and now study biology at Purdue Fort Wayne, where most of my days are spent in a fly lab, setting up genetic crosses and figuring out how genes shape the way flies store fat. Somewhere along the way, I started teaming up with computer science students on health projects, and that’s where I found my interest in bioinformatics and how it’s changing healthcare and genomics. I’ve been learning to speak their language ever since.
Outside the lab, I treat food like another experiment: cooking something new at home, or chasing down a dish I’ve never tried. You’ll also find me painting when I need to slow down, or planning my next spring break with friends.
What this blog is about
This blog is where those pieces meet. It’s a place for me to reflect on what I’m learning in the lab and outside it, and on the small ways each part of my life keeps shaping the others.
Events
Conferences, hackathons and competitions I've been part of. Click one to read about it and find the next edition.
2026
A hackathon in Berkeley where teams build AI tools for biology problems. Replace this with a line or two about your team and what you built.
Biology and AI need each other. Sign up, whichever side you're on.NASA's university challenge where student teams design, build and run a robot for lunar construction tasks. Replace this with a line or two about your role on the team.
Lunabotics 2027 →Teams need more than engineers. Find yours and join.Purdue's spring conference where undergraduates present their research as posters and talks. Replace this with a line or two about what you presented and how it went.
Spring 2027 conference →Doing research? Submit an abstract. Presenting once makes the next time much easier.A weekend hackathon run by Harvard's Health Systems Innovation Lab, where mixed teams of students build solutions to real healthcare problems. Replace this with a line or two about what your team built and what you learned.
HSIL Hackathon 2027 →If you're into health and tech, sign up. You don't need to code to be useful on a team.
2025
A conference bringing together researchers, clinicians and industry working on genomics in India. Replace this with a line or two about the talks you heard and what stood out.
Interested in genomics? It's a great place to see where the field is heading.