About Me — Ananya Ashok
Ph.D. student @ KAUST | Woman in STEM| Science communicator | Writer | Cat lady | Diver | Indian
Hello!
I am Ananya Ashok. I am an Indian, 29 years old and my pronoun is she/her. I grew up in a Tamil Iyer family in Chennai with a strong cultural emphasis on my upbringing. Since I turned seventeen, I have lived a life of contrasts going from a city to a small town, back to a big city, and then to a different country. In my transitions, I have also experienced life from different perspectives — culturally, socially, and economically. I have traveled to 13 countries so far.
My professional portfolio
Currently, I am a final year Ph.D. candidate in marine science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. Here, I study the impact of oil pollution on three of the world’s most critical marine habitats: the Arabian Gulf, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, and the Red Sea. When I am not in the lab, I enjoy experimenting with creative ways of communicating science. I also derive great satisfaction from teaching science and mentoring.
Before moving to the Kingdom, I completed my master's in aquatic environmental management at the Central Institute of Fisheries Education in Mumbai with a Junior Research Fellowship from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research. And before that, I did my bachelor’s in fisheries sciences from the FCRI, Tuticorin.
I am passionate about the environment, pollution, and climate awareness. I have done projects from my undergraduate days on communicating the impacts of climate change to the common man and policymakers. Bridging gaps between science-policy-the public is where I aim to find my career niche.
If you’re interested in knowing more about my research, follow me on Twitter @oceansciencing
My personal portfolio
Since I could hold a pencil and paper, I remember writing — poems, thoughts, a few attempted short stories. As a kid, I would often spend a couple of hours after school in my mom’s office. My mom still has some saved scraps of perforated one-sided ledger sheets with tiny poems and words scribbled across in the time waiting for her to finish work.
To me, writing has always been a close friend and ally.
Writing, photography — there is just one thing I’m missing here— the inspiration.
To me, that comes from traveling, exploring, people-watching, and having new experiences. I enjoy both parts of traveling: the planning and the actual exploring. I can say I am an exhaustive travel planner (ask those who’ve been on trips with me).
My other interests include reading, dancing, cooking, and going on slow walks with Diiidaaa (my cat). Making sure my cat has a comfortable, enriching life is at the very core of my existence.
I enjoy all kinds of reading, but, of late with the quarter-life crises setting in, I find myself attracted to self-help, memoirs, and philosophical reading more than fiction.
Some of my personal identifiers are — she/her, feminist, introvert, agnostic, empath. My Meyers-Briggs personality type is an INTJ.
To conclude, if everything else in my life was to cease, and I could do only one single thing each day, I would watch the sunset. I am on Medium to share my writing, read, learn, and gain new perspectives from the experiences of other writers on this platform.
