Hello! I'm Irshad.

I am a Software Engineer at The Economist, and a Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts.

In a previous life, I was headed towards a medical career in Médecins Sans Frontières. My academic career was heavily focused on the sciences and research - I spent my summers working in local oncology clinics, setting up medical camps across Nepal, and studying forensic science in Wuhan, China. I graduated with a Diploma in Biomedical Science in Singapore, where I was born and raised. My final year research was on the relationship between three prominent genes in the role of breast cancer metastasis - you can find out more here.

At the cusp of adulthood, I packed my bags and moved across the world to the United Kingdom to do my Bachelors in Biochemistry at Queen Mary University of London. The plan was to eventually transform my bench skills to the bedside, and care for those suffering from the very diseases I had based my research on.

My final year coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; I spent the beginning of lockdown back in Singapore, where I worked on the frontlines as a Swab Officer. My efforts were later recognised with a Medal of Resilience awarded by the Prime Minister’s Office.

I came back to London to complete my final year and dissertation, and continued working on the frontlines. My love for investigative journalism and forensic sciences coincided beautifully with my Dissertation Supervisor’s passion for Palaeontology - we were interested in dating bones, and I ended up writing about existing skeletal age estimation techniques for humans, which you can read here.

Outside university, I continued swabbing across the city for multiple projects, including TV sets. I was later trained to work as a Junior Paramedic on site, and then on ambulances. During the long waiting hours, I signed up for Code First Girls’ Introduction to Web Development programme on a whim. It was sponsored by The Economist, a company I had not heard much of then, and while I had thoroughly enjoyed the programme, I did not think much of coding except as a hobby.

Upon graduation, and in the midst of preparing for graduate medical school, I worked as a 111 Health Advisor. As an advocate for widening healthcare access, I was confronted with challenges beyond scope, and realised there are systemic challenges I would not be able to address even as a medical professional. My epiphany led to a decision to leave the only field I had ever known then.

Technology was on the rise in popularity, and I quickly embraced it despite my lack of, well, everything. I started as an IT Operations Analyst at The Economist, where I learnt everything from scratch - from connecting a bluetooth mouse to laptops, to managing Active Directory, and writing Powershell scripts. Fifteen months later, beyond my wildest dreams, I became a Software Engineer for Content Tools & Discovery at the same company.

Today, I build features for The Economist’s digital publication - some of which are featured here. I am also pursuing an MSc in Technology and Public Policy at UCL, because I believe the most important question in technology is not what we can build, but what we should.