Welcome! Bienvenue! Bienvenidos! Swagatam!

Hello, and welcome to my personal (professional?) website. I’m glad you stopped by! As you can see in the panel alongside (or above, if you’re on your cellphone), my name is Aalok Varma. The PhD at the end is just my qualification - I actually use he/him pronouns

Why a personal website?

I personally wanted to have more of an online presence that doesn’t depend on social media. Also, traditional metrics for evaluating scientists - number of publications, journal impact factor, number of citations, … - perpetuate many systemic biases. So, I wanted to maintain an academic website as a way to build a holistic, up-to-date portfolio of my scientific interests and contributions that go beyond just my list of publications, to include teaching, mentorship, outreach, and more.

How did I make this website?

In the spirit of using free and open source resources, I used Hugo to generate the website, using the theme “Anatole”, customizing it to suit my aesthetic. The website is hosted at GitHub, and can be forked to use as a starting point for your own website, if you’d like.

Sources of inspiration for this website

In the process of making this website, I went through personal websites of several friends (marked with a “+” sign), and also stumbled upon interesting resources and websites of people I haven’t met. I have definitely borrowed and personalized ideas from their websites that I liked. Here are some of my favourites (in random order):


The views expressed on this site are mine alone and do not represent those of any institute or organization I may be affiliated to now, or have been affiliated with in the past.