Siddharth Nayak

Siddharth Nayak

PhD Student at MIT

About Me

Interests and Hobbies:

Sports:

Formula 1

The pinnacle of motorsports! I have been watching F1 since my childhood and this was one of the things which motivated me to take up engineering. The amount of engineering which goes into gaining two-tenths of a second on tricky street-circuits like Monaco and technical circuits like Spa, Monza, etc. by changing the front-wing angles, toe etc. and creating innovative solutions within the rules like the DAS system by Mercedes and the double diffuser by Brawn GP has always fascinated me. My favourite constructor has been the silver arrows ever since they (re-)entered F1 in 2010 with Michael Schumacher as one of their drivers. Before that I used to like McLaren-Mercedes when they had Hamilton and Alonso as their drivers. Fun fact: I am in the second episode of Netflix’s Drive to Survive Season 5.

Water Polo and Swimming

I learnt water polo during my second year of undergraduate studies. Fell in love with the speed of the game. It is quite astonishing to me that egg-beating (the thing you do to stay afloat vertically in water) which seemed hard while learning the sport becomes second nature once you get used to it and you do not need to try that hard to stay afloat! Water Polo has helped me improve my stamina and endurance.

Cricket

Have been playing this since my childhood. Represented a few teams at the competitive level. Transitioned from a bowler to an opening batsman.

Other sports I follow and play:

Music:

Instruments

I learnt to play the harmonium from my grandfather and then later by attending classes. This eventually led me to learn to play the piano. This change was initially quite difficult as one plays a harmonium with only one hand (right in my case) whereas piano is played with both hands. Started learning to play guitar during the pandemic. This led me to build my own electric guitar after coming to MIT. Have started learning drums with the motivation of being able to cover Stairway to Heaven with all instruments used in the song:) I would definitely like to learn a few other instruments like violin and bass guitar.

Bands/Artists

My playlist has genres ranging from rap to classical music. My favorite artists include Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Queen, Eminem and many more. Along with this, I also like theme songs and scores from Hans Zimmer, Ramin Djawadi , Brian Tyler (F1 theme!), Ludwig Göransson, Alan Silvestri and John Williams. I also like listening to Ludovico Einaudi, Wolfgang Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, John Bach, Anotonio Vivaldi.

Languages:

I can speak 6 languages (and understand 7):

I would like to learn more languages like Sanskrit, Italian and Spanish along with improving upon Kannada and French and German.

Sketching:

I generally like drawing fictional characters. A few of my sketches. Most of the sketches linked are from when I was a kid and the pandemic break. Sketching has helped me a lot in appreciating the finer details in many of the art pieces as well as music.

Photography:

I took this fun astronomy class (12.409) at MIT where I was introduced to astrophotography and different processing techniques. Although, I was interested in astronomy since my undergrad, I never got a chance to formally learn the techniques required for astrophotography till I took this class. You can find my astrophotography photos here. It is quite astonishing how much one could do with a simple telescope and camera (in manual mode) and dark skies!

Contact Me

I would be glad to have discussions on any of the above topics related to sports, music, sketching and languages.