A Study in Courtship

Is it possible to find love when you’re married to your research? For these Harvard Griffin GSAS alumni, the two went hand in hand. Below, three couples tell their stories of first dates, courtship, and commitment.

A Love of Service

Harry Archerman, PhD ’13, Applied Physics 
Michelle Archerman, PhD ’13, Molecular and Cellular Biology

Harry Archerman is the founder and CEO of Archerman Capital, a venture capital firm that focuses on growth-stage companies in AI, data infrastructure, and cybersecurity. Michelle Archerman volunteers at the Roxbury Latin School, the Meadowbrook School of Weston, and the Harvard Graduate School Fund. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

We both arrived at Harvard as international students in August 2007, one month before our PhD programs officially began. We were enrolled in the English Language Program and living in Richards Hall. On the first morning, our resident advisor organized a welcome breakfast and asked if anyone needed help.

Michelle spoke up—the Ethernet connection in her room wasn’t working. This was back when Wi-Fi wasn't yet ubiquitous, so a dead port meant total isolation. When the RA asked if anyone could fix it, Harry raised his hand. That was the moment we discovered we weren't just in the same program; we were living right next door to each other.

For the rest of that August, we were inseparable. We attended the same English classes and explored local culture through the program’s activities. We rode the Boston Duck Tour, visited the JFK Presidential Library, and took the ferry to Salem. Looking back, nearly every day felt like a date. Our relationship began quietly, tucked into the gaps between our lessons.

Once the fall term started, our academic paths diverged—applied physics for Harry and molecular and cellular biology for Michelle. Unwilling to give up our shared time, Harry went looking for a way to bridge the gap. He discovered the "Commercializing Science" course at Harvard Business School.

We enrolled together, and as Michelle always jokes, we simply found a strategic new way to keep dating. In hindsight, that course did more than just keep us together; it foreshadowed Harry’s eventual transition from physics into technology investing.

That same fall, we raised our hands to join Harvard’s Day of Service. We spent the day at a food bank and Cradles to Crayons, sorting donations and organizing clothing. There were no candlelit dinners or fine clothes—just sweat and fatigue—but to us, it was incredibly romantic.

Our first Christmas in Cambridge left a lasting impression. On Christmas Eve, we were lucky enough to be invited to dinner by Harry’s host family. But on Christmas Day, we found ourselves alone in a nearly empty Harvard Square. Most students had gone home, Dudley House (now the Harvard Griffin GSAS Student Center at Lehman Hall) was closed, and we hadn’t realized that every restaurant would be shut. Hungry and wandering through the dark, quiet streets, the only place we found open was CVS. Our Christmas dinner that night was crackers and milk.

We spent the day at a food bank and Cradles to Crayons, sorting donations and organizing clothing. There were no candlelit dinners or fine clothes—just sweat and fatigue—but to us, it was incredibly romantic.
–Harry and Michelle Archerman

That quiet, hungry night stayed with us. In the years that followed, we couldn't help but ask: who else might be hungry? Who else has nowhere to go? We began volunteering regularly at the Harvard Square homeless shelter during the holidays, preparing and serving meals. As our family grew, we brought our children with us. With each new set of small, helping hands, volunteering became more than a commitment—it became our family tradition.

We were married less than five months after the Ethernet mishap and approached our future with what Michelle calls “naive optimism.” Over the course of our PhD studies, that optimism grew into the life we were building together. Along the way, we welcomed three sons. (Our family has since grown to include a daughter and, of course, our mini goldendoodle.) Today, Michelle finds joy and purpose through her work with the Harvard Graduate School Fund, while Harry continues to volunteer at the Harvard Innovation Labs, supporting the next generation of founders. 

Deal of a Lifetime

Thomas Knox, PhD ’23, Business Economics
Kristin Knox, PhD ’25, Business Economics

Thomas Knox is a partner at Arrowstreet Capital in Boston. Kristin Knox is a research scientist at Silent Spring Institute, “a mission-driven scientific research organization dedicated to uncovering the environmental causes of breast cancer.” 

We were both PhD students in business economics, but we actually have two different versions of how we met. According to Tom, there is a "prequel" to our story that has been effectively purged from the official record. We were both undergraduates at Harvard—Kristin in the Class of 1998 and Tom in the Class of 1999—and lived in Currier House at the same time. Tom remembers seeing Kristin in the dining hall and being struck by her smile, but Kristin has no memory of the encounter. Tom jokes that he wasn't exactly "dating material" back then, so it’s probably for the best that we waited until graduate school to truly connect.

The version we both agree on began in Harvard Business School's Baker Library. Tom was a year ahead in the program and shared a cubicle with a close friend of Kristin’s. Every afternoon, Kristin would stop by to meet her friend for tea, and Tom would be there, often patiently helping her with MATLAB coding. Kristin was impressed by how patient he was (and how good his code was). Soon, Kristin and Tom started running into each other at the legendary economics department parties. Those parties were usually in someone's apartment with an amateur DJ, and they were almost always shut down by the police.

Our official first date was an all-Ivy Halloween party at the Harvard Club in Boston. When it came time for our first real dinner alone, Tom wanted to be transparent about his intentions by picking the fanciest, most formal restaurant he could find. Luckily, that same friend from the library intervened and told him it was a terrible idea. She suggested Central Kitchen in Central Square instead.

As economists, we found Central Kitchen to be the perfect choice. They had an incredible wine list with high-end bottles, like a 1998 Penfolds Grange, priced well below market value—at least for a graduate student budget. We went back many times after that and basically drank them out of that vintage. It was a great deal, and it became "our" spot.

When it came time for our first real dinner alone, Tom wanted to be transparent about his intentions by picking the fanciest, most formal restaurant he could find. Luckily, [a friend of Kristin’s] intervened and told him it was a terrible idea. She suggested Central Kitchen in Central Square instead.
–Kristin and Tom Knox

Our relationship was truly tested after Tom graduated. He took a job teaching at the University of Chicago, while Kristin stayed in Cambridge to finish her degree. For a year, we lived a challenging, long-distance life. Kristin would attend a finance seminar on Friday, rush to the airport, and fly to Chicago just in time for dinner. On Mondays, she would wake up at 4:00 a.m. to catch the first flight back to Boston for her next seminar.

We eventually realized that while the research environment in Chicago was amazing, life without each other was miserable. Tom decided that career moves are "reversible decisions" and moved back to Boston to work across the street from Harvard. We were married in May 2024, right in the middle of our two graduations.

Today, we live in Newton with our three children. Our oldest daughter, Katherine, was recently accepted to the Harvard Class of 2030, which felt like a full-circle moment—especially for Tom’s father, who came to Harvard on a full scholarship from rural Virginia and went on to get his PhD in English from Harvard. Looking back, we realize that while we came to Harvard Griffin GSAS to become academics and do important research, the most important thing we found wasn't a data point or a dissertation topic. It was each other. We always say that grad school is where we learned a great deal, but meeting at Harvard was the best outcome we never could have "penciled in."

Halfway Around the World, Right Next Door

Anshul Kumar, PhD ’18, Sociology
Dayita Kumar, MArch ’16

Anshul Kumar is an assistant professor at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions. Dayita Kumar is an architect in the San Diego office of Gensler, an international architecture, design, and urban planning firm. 

Our story technically began a year before we met, because fate likes a long cold open—and because of our mutual friend and fellow alumnus, David Sherman, who unknowingly played matchmaker while just trying to graduate from the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

In 2014, Anshul dramatically exited the US stage left and headed to India for PhD field research, fully convinced this might turn into a semi-permanent, “I live here now” situation. He’d been to India before with family, but this was his first solo, adult, beard-growing, life-choices-making trip.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the planet, Dayita got into the Harvard Graduate School of Design’s MArch program and arrived in the US for the very first time—bright-eyed, optimistic, and assigned a room in Conant Hall, where she just happened to be neighbors with David.

Fast-forward to David’s graduation party in May 2015, which Dayita accidentally crashed because she assumed it was a Harvard Griffin GSAS event (classic pilot-episode confusion). David introduced her to his friend Anshul, who had temporarily returned from India for the summer and was sporting a very serious beard that made him seem older, stranger, and possibly like a professor who wandered in by mistake. Dayita found him funny, a little weird, and definitely not someone she expected to see again. They exchanged numbers—not for romance, obviously—but so Anshul could make more friends with “India connections” before heading back. Because all great love stories begin with practical networking goals and extremely low expectations.

That summer, Dayita was living in a sublet just outside campus on Kirkland Avenue—close enough to Harvard to feel academic, far enough to feel like adulthood. She would go over after her day's work to hang out at Conant Hall. After dinner each night, Anshul would walk her home from the dining halls, because one does not simply let a new friend walk alone at night when one is clearly auditioning for “romantic lead who doesn’t know it yet.”

The truth is, we both knew we were ready for something serious, and instead of seeing our academic work and our relationship as competing priorities, we treated them like teammates. We became each other’s quiet accountability system.
–Anshul and Dayita Kumar

Those walks quickly became the best part of the day: long conversations, accidental confessions, and the slow realization that this was no longer just a convenient route on Google Maps. Somewhere between the curb cuts and the streetlights, our friendship quietly upgraded itself. And then, in a moment that can only be described as aggressively cinematic, Anshul wrote an original song and sang it to Dayita in the rain, under a yellow umbrella, to say the three words everyone pretends aren’t coming. Subtle? No. Effective? Completely.

The truth is, we both knew we were ready for something serious, and instead of seeing our academic work and our relationship as competing priorities, we treated them like teammates. We became each other’s quiet accountability system: Anshul helped Dayita navigate job applications, deadlines, and the mysterious emotional terrain of post-grad decisions, while Dayita gently—but firmly—encouraged Anshul to finish his field research and come back to the US so we could stop living on opposite sides of the world. Loving each other didn’t slow our careers down; it clarified them. We helped each other clear the necessary academic hurdles not to escape our work, but to move forward—together—and start a life that made room for both ambition and partnership.

Anshul and Dayita now live in San Diego with their almost four-year-old son, Neev, and are expecting a baby girl in May, right before their tenth wedding anniversary in July 2026.

Banner image courtesy of Shutterstock