Sweet Somethings #001

Celie Katovitch, 22, is a first year Master of Divinity Student at Harvard Divinity School, where she is preparing for ordination as a parish minister in the Unitarian Universalist tradition. She is originally from Syracuse, New York.

Neil Krishan Aggarwal is a research psychiatrist at Columbia University. He graduated with a master's degree in South Asian religions and anthropology from Harvard University. Formerly Hindu Chaplain at Yale University while completing his psychiatric training, he is interested in cultural psychiatry, psychiatric anthropology, and global mental health among South Asians. His research is on developing psychotherapeutic styles from Hinduism, Sikhism, and South Asian Islam and the meanings of redemption/healing in these traditions.

Ahmed Elewa is a graduate student at the Islamic American University where he is researching "responsibility" in Shariah and Islamic Jurisprudence. He is also a doctoral candidate at the University of Massachusetts Medical School where he studies early embryo development. Upon receiving his Masters Degree in Biomedical Sciences in 2007, Ahmed spent two years working as a community organizer and interfaith coordinator in Boston before moving to Egypt to pursue advanced religious studies. He is currently enrolled in the College of Shariah and Law at al-Azhar University. In 2010 Ahmed published his first novel in Arabic (alRawda) which highlights the paradoxes inherent in biculturalism. A year later he published a memoir, "Ground Zero Mosque: The confessions of a Western-Middle-Eastern Muslim" to narrate his personal encounter with these paradoxes. Using State of Formation as a medium, Ahmed continues to develop his thoughts on personal and social multiculturalism and how religion, science and history interact within individuals and societies. Follow him on twitter @albostoni.