About me

I grew up in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I did my undergraduate studies in Computer Science before moving to the US for graduate school. I spent six years at Dartmouth College doing my PhD with Andrew Campbell, working on mobile sensing studies of students, workers, and clinical populations. Before joining UVA, I was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, mentored by Gabriella Harari.

What Drives My Work

What keeps me coming back to this work is a tension I find genuinely interesting: mental health is one of the most subjective, context-dependent things humans experience and yet we now have tools that can passively observe more of someone’s daily life than ever before. Most of my research lives in that gap, asking what these signals can honestly tell us about how someone is doing, where they fall short and how we should design systems that take both the data and the person seriously. Most of what I do is collaborative. The questions I care about don’t sit comfortably inside any single field, so I regularly work with psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists, business professors and engineers. That collaborative orientation has shaped projects I’m particularly proud of, like depression detection through smartphone images and the longest mobile sensing study to date.

Beyond the Lab

When I’m not researching, I enjoy gaming, exploring hiking trails, and binge-watching movies and TV shows. I’m passionate about mentoring students and making research accessible to broader audiences. I’m also actively involved in contributing to organizations that provide educational opportunities for underserved children (in Nepal and beyond).

I’m always excited to discuss research, collaborate on new ideas, or simply chat about life in academia. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to connect!