Siddharth Kulkarni, originally from Satara, Maharashtra, completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Zoology, from Shivaji University, Kolhapur. Growing up amidst the Western Ghats, he was fascinated by seasonal cycles in surrounding biodiversity which got him interested in macroevolution. Siddharth conducted his doctoral research at the George Washington University, Washington, D.C., United States on the evolution of the arachnid Order Araneae (spiders) and developed a probe set to target ultraconserved regions in their genomes. During his postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, United States, he explored the origins and diversification of various arachnid groups which led to the first global phylogenies of Amblypygi and Solifugae. Siddharth joined IISERTVM as a Ramanujan Fellow in May 2024 where he studies asymmetric diversification on a changing planet using chelicerates as a model system.