Bharathi Jagadeesh

Bharathi Jagadeesh, age 58, passed away from colon cancer on January 8, 2024, surrounded by her loving family. She is profoundly missed by many, and our lives are all the better for her time with us.

Bharathi was born on October 3, 1965, in Mysuru, Karnataka, India. Bharathi was a curious child who loved to explore. Even as a toddler, she would often wander off down the streets, leaving her shoes behind, chattering away to those she came across on her small journeys. Bharathi continued to follow her own path throughout her life, never hesitating to take a moment to admire a flower, to appreciate a beautiful view or a stunning sky, or to start up a conversation when an interesting idea came to mind. Bharathi had a deep love of learning, a brilliant and quick mind, a dedication to thoughtful discussion, and a vivacious desire to explore questions big and small. She had a great passion and appreciation for art of all kinds-photography, painting, crafts-which continued throughout her life.

At age five, along with her mother and two younger sisters, Bharathi emigrated from India to Columbus, Ohio to join her father who was a graduate student and later a professor at Ohio State University. As a child, Bharathi loved to learn, reading anything she could find (occasionally surreptitiously during class), once going through an entire biology textbook cover-to-cover. In high school at the Columbus School for Girls, she excelled in German and science, and enjoyed spending time painting and pondering. Bharathi went to college at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). There, she studied biology and began to focus on the burgeoning field of neuroscience. She also met her future husband, Stan, at Caltech, in 1984, beginning a partnership that would last the remaining forty years of her life. They married in 1988, and went whitewater rafting in Quebec on their honeymoon. They loved travel together - canoe trips, kayak trips, beaches, cities - but also just loved being together, arranging their desks and offices at home so that they could see each other and talk to each other whatever else they were doing.

Bharathi earned a PhD in Neuroscience at Northwestern University in 1993, and then did a post-doctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She then went west to Seattle, to join the faculty of the University of Washington (UW), running a research lab in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, for about a decade. Among her research interests was how the brain recognized faces. For that research, she began taking digital pictures of faces - which soon evolved into her becoming an expert photographer, who photographed everything, but especially her family, children, flowers, and the sky in all its glory.

In Seattle, Bharathi and Stan had two children, Leela and Avi. Bharathi worked tirelessly to support her children and find spaces for them to nurture their interests and values. She relished rich and varied conversation and discussion with her children and family, and adored shared activities ranging from meticulous origami crafting to closely analyzing data (on just about anything) organized in spreadsheets and graphs. She was our treasured record-keeper, through both her photos and her personal blog, where she kept an incredible and lovingly specific archive of memories big and small. She moved through the world with a commitment to honesty, care, detail, and life-long learning. In later years, she served on the board of her children's school, Seattle Country Day School, and championed justice, equity, and inclusion initiatives within the school. She also served on the board of Refugee Artisan Initiative and delighted in learning with and from people from all walks of life. Shaped by her own experience as a first-generation immigrant, she was a fierce advocate for the power of education. It was deeply important to her that all people have access to opportunities to grow, develop, learn, be challenged, and be able to achieve their own unique dreams.

In October of 2023, Bharathi was diagnosed with advanced and aggressive Stage IV Colon Cancer. Her children quickly returned to Seattle and her family was able to spend her final months together reading to each other, talking, and laughing. Despite calamitous medical setbacks that piled on ever so quickly, Bharathi remained dedicated to finding pockets of joy, recording small moments, and cherishing her time with her family. She passed peacefully surrounded by her family on January 8, 2024.

Bharathi is survived by her husband Stan Berman, and her children, Leela (23) and Avi (20), her parents Jagadeesh and Kalyani, her sisters Sujatha and Mangala, and by extended family in Seattle, Portland, and India.

While Bharathi had a great and well-known love of flowers, we ask that those wishing to honor her instead contribute to a cause close to their hearts, especially an organization that works with immigrants, young people, or education. She believed deeply we all have a small role to play toward collective change. More than anything, she wanted all people to be able to live life to the fullest and to hold on to that which makes us happy and gives life meaning: what strikes joy, what moves us, and what leaves us all in a dazzlement of surprise.

A celebration of life will be held sometime in the spring, when the flowers are blooming.