A decade ago Maya Shankar, a US citizen of Indian origin was asked about her dream job. She replied that she wanted to be ‘Science advisor to the President’.
Now living her dream, as a Senior Advisor at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Shankar and her colleagues have formed a new team that leverages the latest social and behavioural science to make federal programs simpler and more effective.
A childhood music prodigy, Shankar‘s entry into science was accidental.
Being accepted by the Juilliard School of Music at age 9 and later selected for private instruction by violin master Itzhak Perlman, she was performing internationally and playing concertos on NPR; a promising musical career lay ahead.
However her musical career was cut-short at the age of 15, after a severe hand injury forced her to give up the violin.
After chancing upon a book on language development, she took interest in cognitive science, the study of the mind on which she did her undergraduate studies at Yale, then her Ph.D. at Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, and finally a post-doctoral program at Stanford. Still a passionate violinist, Shankar says her career at the Whitehouse has been the most gratifying and rewarding experience of her life.
She attributes her success as both a Science Advisor and a Violinist to her parents, who encouraged her talent.
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