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Ever since my very early introduction to semiconductor technology and my recent experience with VLSI technology based on my undergraduate studies, my objective has centered on advancing my knowledge in the VLSI design.

I come from a very cultural family of industrialists well grounded for several generations in the core family values of mutual trust, respect, endurance, and willing to help people in need. Besides the family business of dealing in plastic products and packaging materials, my father, has his own investment company. My mother is a homemaker and a graduate from Bombay University in commerce. Living in a joint family, I have been blessed with lot of attention and opportunities. This has translated in getting the best education and sports training one can hope for.

Right from my childhood, I was fascinated by applied Science and Mathematics. My interests were nurtured during the formative years of my schooling. Throughout my school years, from grades one through twelve, I was consistently ranked in the top five percentile of my class for my academic performance. As an active participant into a group activity assigned tasks of preparing study projects and informative charts on various subjects like history, science, literature and current issues during my high school years, I understood the values of patience, perseverance and most importantly team work.

During the last two years of my high school, I was also a part of the school cricket team. Playing billiards also has been a passion and I have taken part in state tournaments, reaching the quarter final stage twice. While billiards has helped me hone my concentration levels, listening to soft rock music gives me a peace of mind. Also the competition brought out the best in me. Thus I have always believed that competitiveness if used to better the situation and standard of living is a virtue.

However, the turning point of my life was an introductory course study on semiconductor technology as a part of the twelfth grade study that put in me a burning desire to unravel its mysteries. This desire to learn more about semiconductor technology led me into selecting Bachelors in Electronics and Communication engineering as my undergraduate course of study. I made efforts to set example with hard work, excellence, and pragmatic thinking. Right from the first semester, I was placed at the top of my class of 150 students. Consequently I was awarded a Gold Medal for ranking first in the university for the first four semesters. As of today, I am at the top of my class.

As I built my knowledge in Electronics through my undergraduate studies, I saw the puzzles in the mind of a 7 year old child getting solved, a child who had innocently disassembled his battery operated remote controlled car in an effort to repair it and was dumbfounded by what he had seen inside. The sheer complexity of the electronic devices and the simplicity of their building blocks, the VLSI chips, was an intriguing paradox that still urges me to probe deeper and unravel the mysteries inside those Ð''black boxes'. Thus midway through my undergraduate study I found my interest getting specific towards pursuing VLSI as a major.

As an advocate of Ð''learn by doing' philosophy, I pursued a multitude of projects at my undergraduate level. In the sixth semester of my undergraduate study, I had developed a "Temperature Sensing and Control Unit using Microcontroller 8051". This being a team project, my task was to develop the analog to digital converter, microcontroller interface and the associated software. In my seventh semester of undergraduate study, I had successfully worked on the project "Study of the Digital Signal Processor TMS320C2X and implementation of Fast Fourier Transform". Here too, my task was software development and a part of the processor architecture study. All along, I never got bogged down by hurdles and continually tried to improve upon my performance to exceed the benchmarks I had set. Both the projects were well acclaimed by the faculty. I have also