He was previously a professor at Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) in Prayagraj, India.

[citation needed] His family hails from the southern Indian state of Kerala.

He was also a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey from 2001 to 2004.

[4] He is married to Rukmini Dey, a Professor of Mathematical Physics and Geometry at ICTS-TIFR.

[6] Later, his work focused on attempts to derive the AdS/CFT correspondence, and on minimal model holography (with Matthias Gaberdiel).