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Jayant Rajgopal
Department of Industrial Engineering 

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I have been at Pitt since January 1986 and my time in Pittsburgh is the longest I've ever spent in any one town!  I guess that's a plug for da 'burgh - an unassuming and unpretentious, but surprisingly eclectic city. It has some wonderful neighborhoods to explore, although it isn't a good idea to do this until you've figured out that the North Side and the South Side (aka "Da Nore-Sigh" and "Da Sah-Sigh") are totally different from the North Hills and the South Hills. Pittsburghers are "real" people with no airs about themselves, which is very refreshing. On the other hand, they speak this really strange language called Pittsburghese. The traffic patterns and the streets can drive you crazy as well. This is the only place I know where you can drive East on the Parkway West and drive West on the Parkway East. And don't ever try negotiating the streets downtown. The area is shaped like a triangle so "going around the block" is a pretty meaningless phrase - if you were to hang four successive rights, you wouldn't be back where you started; you'd be horribly lost. All in all though, (as I like to tell everyone) it's a city that offers everything you'd want from a city but without most of the attendant hassles. The weather does kind of suck - hey, you can't have it all!

I have an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Madras in India (where I was raised as an army brat in numerous different cities).  I then came to the U.S. for graduate work. The natives were friendly, so I decided to stay awhile...

My graduate degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) are in Industrial and Management Engineering from The University of Iowa.

Speaking of Iowa, I am a big fan of the Hawkeyes.

They say I look like a cross between William Shatner and Goran Visnjic (with a dash of Natalie Imbruglia (??) thrown in...) - courtesy of MyHeritage.com.