Kaushik Kalyanaraman is an applied and computational mathematician. He trained to be an electrical engineer (bachelor's and master's degrees), chose to be a computer scientist (doctoral degree) and now identifies as an applied mathematician. His degrees are from Anna University Chennai, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in that order. Kaushik's research interests are interdisciplinary and span applied math, computer science and engineering. His honors include a best paper award at ACM-SIAM SPM 2012, and being an invitee to the inaugural Heidelberg laureate forum in 2013. Kaushik has also had a brief industrial stint with the former TATA company Computational Research Labs in Pune, India before his Ph.D. and a research stint at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY after. Philosophies of computing, math and science are a side interest which he tries to cultivate during his personal time.