Niladri Sarker is a maverick drifter—a self-described "not your run-of-the-mill Homo sapiens"—

who has dabbled in a bit of everything, stumbled through many of them, hoping he's nailed at least a few.

Trained as a scientist and working on space projects in collaboration with NASA/JPL, his early research concentrated on the detection of biosignatures on Saturn’s giant moon Titan, culminating in the Cassini-Huygens mission.

Over the last fifteen years, his wanderlust has taken him to some of the planet’s most inaccessible locations. He loves to raise awareness on environmental issues by visiting far-flung natural wonders, endangered wildlife, indigenous tribes, and vanishing cultures around the world. Although he's thus far been able to roam only in 89 of them, he someday aspires to be able to crisscross every one of the world's 196 countries and 7 continents.

ART SHOW INTERNATIONAL GALLERY, which he founded during the peak of the pandemic, was aimed to serve as a prominent online platform to support a global art community heavily disrupted by gallery closures and loss of sales.

Today, rebranded as TERAVARNA, it has become one of the world's leading contemporary online fine art gallery, with artists from as many as 118 countries regularly being represented in its art exhibitions.

Dr. Sarker holds a Ph.D. in chemistry and works in his day job as a college professor. He lives outside Los Angeles, California, with his wife and three daughters. His current and past pets include dogs, cats, rabbits, tortoises, snakes, tarantula, hedgehog, lizards, and gecko.

In his spare time, which has lately become increasingly rare, he enjoys painting, writing, and crisscrossing the world with cameras in tow.