I'm a graduate student in the Physics Department at Rutgers University. In my research, I computationally study evolution in human populations and in the influenza virus, and I have worked on collaborative projects studying complex phenotypes in yeast and in C. elegans.

I enjoy communicating science through teaching, mentoring, and writing. In 2010, I received the Richard J. Plano Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. In 2011, I was an Education Fellow at the New York Academy of Sciences and mentored middle-school students in a low-income community of Newark, NJ. In 2012, I was a volunteer instructor at the New Jersey Governor’s School of Engineering and Technology where I taught 25 students how to build stable, self-balancing robots starting from basic electronics components. Come Fall 2013, I will teach a month-long module on the Physics of Sustainability to a class of over 100 non-science majors.

I write an award-winning science blog, Empirical Zeal, and have been published by Scientific American Books in The Best Science Writing Online 2012.

You can contact me at aatish@physics.rutgers.edu