Lakshmi Chandrasekaran

Lakshmi Chandrasekaran is a freelance science communicator whose work has appeared in MIT
Tech Review, Quanta, Society for Industrial and Applied Math News, Astronomy, Science News
and several other outlets. Previously, Lakshmi worked as a science liaison and writer at the
nonprofit, The Alzheimer’s Association based in Chicago, where she simplified a range of
complex research topics funded by the Association into lay summaries to raise dementia
awareness among a wide audience including donors.

Lakshmi received her master’s in health, science and environment at the Medill School of
Journalism, Northwestern University in 2017. At Northwestern, she was awarded the Comer
fellowship for environmental reporting. She covered several climate-change related stories
ranging from solar-powered houses to the study of ice ages to tackle global warming. Lakshmi
has a doctorate in applied mathematics from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). She
used mathematical models to understand how the brain processes information as part of her
doctoral thesis. In 2020, Lakshmi was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from NJIT for
her contributions to popularizing math among the general public.