Not long after he arrived at UCLA to begin graduate studies in Electrical Engineering, Vinod Panikkath recalls going to a burger place.

"Hi, how's it going?" asked the clerk. Vinod was puzzled. Why would a stranger be "so concerned about how I am?" he wondered. Everywhere he went, he kept hearing the phrase, sometimes from new friends but often from strangers. In India, only people you knew would ask such a question, Vinod says, and "they really mean it. It's not like they're asking out of courtesy." Usually, they will stop a while to hear your reply and share news.

In America, by contrast, at least in Los Angeles people "don't really expect any answer," Vinod soon realized. At first, he would offer "at least a line or two" in response to a "hi-how-are-you," but he soon discovered that even a brief reply wasn't always welcome.

"Things are a lot faster here," Vinod says. "People don't really have much time for each other."

Vinod's experience shows how small, commonplace, cultural gestures can be confusing to foreign students in a new country. And Vinod considered himself well-prepared, thanks to help and advice from an aunt and cousins who had come to the United States before him.

As Vinod completed his undergraduate degree at the Institute of Technology in Madras, he began to look abroad for his next move. India has good engineering schools, he says, but for graduate study, "you have a lot more choice when you look overseas,". He chose UCLA because it ranked in the top 10 engineering programs, with a faculty of sterling reputation. His cousins helped Vinod with application and visa questions.

Although his residence is in the United States, Vinod finds himself in a department where both faculty and students come from many countries. "Every other person you meet seems to have some foreign origin or other," he says.

Dr. Bahram Jalali, who directs the Optoelectronic Circuits and Systems Laboratory where Vinod works, confirms Vinod's impression. Like Dr. Jalali, who was born in Iran, more than half of his graduate students and postdoctoral fellows came to UCLA from other countries: China, France, India, Korea, the Netherlands, and Russia. "We look for the smartest people in the world," Dr. Jalali says, "and the smartest people come from all different countries."

Communication in Dr. Jalali's laboratory is facilitated by two common languages. First, Dr. Jalali has made a rule that only English may be spoken in his lab. And Vinod points out that "we talk in the same technical lingo." All the students have similar educational backgrounds, he says, so "the basic stuff we all know is similar. We understand each other perfectly."

The goal of Dr. Jalali's work in photonics and optics is to use technology for hi-speed data conversion. Some applications are military enhancing radar and target recognition while others will find uses in communications. Among other projects, his lab hopes to make it possible to send data so quickly that you could "transfer the information in the Library of Congress in a couple of minutes," says Vinod, who is working on a circuit that will be used in the project.

The opportunity to work with people of varied national backgrounds during graduate study will contribute to his success, Vinod believes. Engineering has been an international field for some time, and communications technology is making research across boundaries even easier. For example, an Electrical Engineering professor who was visiting Korea never missed a lecture while he was away. He met his class in Los Angeles via live video conferencing.

Even now, "people in a research group don't actually have to be in the same country," Vinod says. Work can be passed from "hand to hand" via electronic means. So Vinod might someday be part of a chain of researchers around the world, in a 24-hour operation that won't require anyone to work nights.

Still more than a year away from completing his master's degree, Vinod remains undecided about future plans, including obtaining a PhD. He hopes to work in a research lab after completing his master's degree, then perhaps begin additional studies. His adviser, Dr. Jalali, says Vinod is a "quick learner, very self-confident I genuinely think he has a bright future."

Eventually, Vinod expects to return to the bucolic Madras suburb that is home to his mother and father, a mechanical engineer. It's a peaceful life, Vinod says, in a community where people invite each other into their homes for dinner and take evening walks together. And "every other guy you run into," he says, "would be somebody you know."

Published in Spring 1999, Graduate Quarterly