Authorities have verified that an Indian-origin student at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has been found dead after going missing over the weekend while hiking alone in the Big Pine Lakes region of California.
According to the student newspaper Daily Nexus, the body of Vikram Mubayi, a PhD candidate in the Chemical Engineering Department at UCSB, was found in Inyo National Forest. On August 1, at approximately 8:30 p.m., the PhD student shared his GPS coordinates with his family while on the route.
Inyo County Search and Rescue and the California Highway Patrol launched a search operation after he failed to return to his outpost on time or stay in touch with his family. On the evening of August 3, they discovered him dead.
The manner of his death has not been disclosed by investigators, but there has also been no sign of foul play. Mubayi’s death circumstances are still being looked into.
Mubayi was born and brought up in Hong Kong. His family wrote on Reddit that he was a “fairly experienced hiker.” According to Mubayi’s self-written biography, which is available on the website of the student-run non-profit Illini 4000, he enjoyed athletics and “being outdoors.”
His mother introduced him to tennis and hiking “pretty much as soon as I learned how to walk,” he claimed. According to his bio, he was also a skilled rider.
He stated that he earned a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2022 prior to enrolling at UCSB. He served as both a teaching assistant and an undergraduate research assistant at UIUC’s Burke Laboratory.
According to his LinkedIn page, Mubayi studied microorganisms and biological processes for decomposing plastics and plant waste at UCSB in an effort to create sustainable petroleum substitutes.
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