Yajat's spiritual path from monk life to AI climate researcher
"Let's work with nature. Let's work with the five elements of this planet and see if we can contribute and make it better."
Published on the 26 March 2026
An early spiritual journey
Being born in Vrindavan, a town in North Central India that's traditionally acknowledged as the childhood home of the Hindu deity Krishna, Yajat Goswami grew up in a very spiritual environment where there were "ready-made" answers for any questions he had.
But those answers didn't suffice – if at all – so Yajat did what every curious person did: he asked questions and kept digging deeper.
"Being in such a place where all the answers come back to Krishna, it was not so easy to ask the questions, and I couldn't argue beyond a certain point," recalls Yajat. "So, I started looking for the answers through books, videos, and people like Yogananda, Swami Vivekananda and other spiritual leaders."
While Yajat faced some opposition from his family for his spiritual journey, it was, ironically, not that different from what his father had done in moving the family from Vrindavan to Delhi for better educational opportunities.
"Spirituality is different for everyone and it depends on your experiences and path you're coming from," he explains. "If I'm a non-vegetarian or if I'm an introvert, does that mean there's no path for me?"
Yajat recalls how he was just "drawn to Vrindavan and their home temple," but there were still fundamental questions that weren't answered by anyone. "On paper, I had all the answers, and yet I had no answers."
"It moved on to me going into silence more often and even traveling India on my own.
I went to Rishikesh, kept moving, trying to visit temples and just trying to find myself in a way."
Combining the spiritual with the practical
Having spent time travelling and figuring out his own spiritual path, there was a gradual shift in Yajat's thinking. "I was living with [my family], yet I was also 'away' from the family. They wanted me to be [home], so I didn't want to dishearten them by any means. But they could also see that things were changing drastically."
What exactly was changing so drastically for Yajat? It wasn't so much as one specific thing that nudged him from going down the path of a monk towards a researcher. Rather, it was a gradual process.
"Seeing Krishna and the deity from my hometown now [at this point] is very different from me seeing the same things 10 years back," explains Yajat. "There were expectations from me, which every parent and family might have, but after this journey of seeking, it had to be in alignment with whatever I wanted for my life too."
That alignment meant leaving his previous data job at a ed-tech firm called Ivy Knowledge Services and pursuing his higher studies in research. "I realised that research is my way. I mean, in a way, I have always been a researcher asking questions and trying to find out the answers."
"The entire journey, you arrive [back] to the same place. But the same place is so different now, because you have gone through a journey and [bring] your [new] experiences."
For Yajat, the transition from spiritual journeyman to researcher felt like a natural step, as he was essentially able to take his natural curiosity and apply it to a more practical framework, starting with the data science industry. "When I saw the similarity between these two pathways, it just hit me that maybe this is the way to combine the spiritual and the research," he reflects.
"A scientist also doesn't believe anything. They experiment, they observe. If you tell them, '[water is] two hydrogen molecules and one oxygen molecule, they wouldn't believe it. They would have to see [and test] it. You can't just go with the intuition."
Practicing spirituality through research
Having found a way to practice his spirituality through his innate curiosity and passion for research, Yajat's academic journey is now all about using science and AI to help people.
"I realised 'why use AI data science just to make more billions for the companies?' Why not use it for something good and altruistic?" he explains. "If we can't stop AI usage, let's see how it can be used to reverse climate change and to have a better environmental and societal impact."
Yajat's first major project was in agriculture at the Indian Institute of Science, where his goal was to raise awareness about the decline in soil quality and empower farmers using AI, remote sensing, drone technology and satellites. After getting his work published, he moved on to a biomedical project that involved using AI to detect cerebral palsy in infants.
Fittingly, how Yajat joined the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre as part of a Master of Philosophy (MPhil) program working on AI for flood intelligence was a leap of faith. "Two years back, when I was doing my masters in AI back in India, I got into a PhD at the UNSW Civil and Environmental Engineering department on using agroforestry techniques to mitgate landslides. At the time, landslides were happening quite often in India," he recalls.
"My goal is to use my existing knowledge to do something which is beneficial for the society."
"Unfortunately, the scholarship didn't come in. [My wife] and I were so sure that I would get this scholarship, so she applied for a job at UNSW and got accepted, while I got the rejection. Now there were two things: either we both go work at Punjab, where I had been offered a job, or we move to Sydney, where I have nothing in my hands, and it would be the first time I would be going out of [India]. But she got a decent job, so we both decided to give it a chance and see what happens."
Towards the end of November 2025, Yajat visited the Climate Change Research Centre website and saw this fully-funded MPhil program. Given all the floods and bushfires in Australia in recent years, this program was a great fit for his expertise. He applied and was accepted into the program. Asking him about the program, he explains that it's all about "using AI to see if it can outperform the existing physics-based models and help predict the floods quicker while using less computational time and resources."
Asking to sum up his journey so far, Yajat thinks for a moment and says, "You can't give medicine to a society [if] they're not ready for it, right? For me, the philosophy is to do the best we can to contribute to humanity and the people."
"Let's work with nature. Let's work with the five elements of this planet and see if we can contribute and make it better."
All interview quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
This story was originally published on the UNSW Current Students website.