I’m grateful to have a wonderful and gratifying 2022. Since 2018, I have been setting goals for each year and doing a personal assessment at the end of the year.
- Professional
- Based on the feedback from management, I have demonstrated great technical leadership which has helped our team to gain deep knowledge and meet our schedule milestones.
- Along with technical leadership, I was also able to contribute more to execution of engineering tasks compared to 2021 which gives me a lot of happiness.
- I am immensely grateful to my management team for their support in helping me balance my PhD workload with Intel work.
- Financial
- I have paid 82% of my first mortgage over a decade.
- Academic
- Immensely thankful for the coaching and mentoring from my research adviser Prof. Christof Teuscher which enabled me to learn the nuisances of academic writing and enabled me to write my first journal paper. I learned to deal with rejection with more excitement to ponder and execute innovative ideas to improve the paper.
- I am grateful to be selected for the prestigious Neuromorphic Computing workshop at Telluride, Colorado where I also won the Best “New Neuromorph” award. I had been wanting to attend this workshop since 2015. https://sites.google.com/view/telluride-2022/about-workshop/awards.
- Attended the Winter School at Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur (IITJ) on Algorithms Graphs and Game theory and won the outstanding poster award in the poster competition. https://cse.iitj.ac.in/index.php/events/winter-school/algorithms-graphs-games
- I cultivated precious friendships and memorable moments with brilliant students and professors I have met during these workshops.
- I am immensely thankful to Parul University for honoring me with the prestigious Prominent Alumni Award and providing me with an opportunity to encourage engineering students through my personal and professional journey.
- Started learning and implementing Graph Neural Networks (GNNs).
- Athletic
- Currently lifting 1.3 times my body weight for deadlift. Scrupulously followed 16+ hours of intermittent fasting throughout the year.
- I tracked my calories and macro consumption throughout the year. Average calories consumed per day 1700 Kcals. Weight Loss over the year – 7.5 kg.
- Pushed myself to climb harder grades in both Sport and Traditional style climbing. 2022 was more focused on climbing than running.
| Activity | 2022 | 2021 |
| Running | 1013 km, 19,882 m elevation gain | 1947 km, 56,388 m elevation gain |
| Climbing Trip Reports | 8 | 7 |
| Total Vertical Climbing | 3904 m | 2196 m |
On the personal front, I am thankful for the opportunity to spend a lot of quality time with my family and my lovely two nieces. I got Lasik surgery done and the first sight of seeing distant buildings clearly through my own eyes after 19 years was a surreal feeling.
Areas of improvement
I had tracked all the work, research and workout hours in 2022. After analyzing the data, I realized that 48% of my waking hours over the year are not spent on work, research and workout but spent on other activities such as commute, cleaning, cooking, entertainment, phone and other chores. So, my goal in 2023 is to tap into this 48% and increase my focused hours for work and research.
Neuromorphic Computing Workshop, Telluride, Colardo, USA. At the banquet party with my best buddies.
With the crew at one of the hikes in Telluride, Colorado, USA
Deeply grateful to Parul University for the opportunity to inspire and encourage the next generation of engineers
Poster Presentation at the Winter School on Algorithms, Graphs and Game Theory at Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur
Picture with the most patient listeners at Parul University
Precious family time
Time with you is time well spent, my dearest niece Alisha.
Dasherton Climbs 