startup series
UJJWAL FIDDLING WITH EQUIPMENT IN THE EARLY DAYS
Biology by sheer chance.
“It’s a funny story,” he
elaborates, “During my
third year in college where
I was pursuing my B.Tech
in Computer Science,
he had to choose one
of the 120 topics listed
by our college and read
white papers throughout
the semester.”
In a hurry to choose
something before the
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BioVoiceNews | May 2017
deadline closed, Ujjwal
ended up choosing a topic
called “genetic hacking”.
He had thought it had
something to do with
genetic algorithms or at
least something to do
with computers but it was
only upon reaching my
classroom that he realized
that it was pure biotech. It
turned out that he was the
only person in my college
to have chosen this and he
was in quite a fix now.
“This was the beginning.
As I learnt more, my
mind was blown. I had
always seen biology as a
collection of facts that you
mugged up. Programming
and designing systems
was what fascinated
me. Trying to design
biological systems seemed
like the ultimate thing.
Eventually I decided that