Amalia Gnanadesikan, born 1968 in Massachusetts, USA, has a doctorate in linguistics. She studied systems of writing and South Asian languages. She has written the following books: "The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet" (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, 2009) and
"Dhivehi: The Language of the Maldives" (De Gruyter Mouton, Berlin, 2017). She taught at the University of Maryland and now lives in Severna Park, Maryland.