Current Position

Data Scientist, Artificial Intelligence Group at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Major

Mathematics and Computer Science

Graduating Year

2021

A message from Shreya

Focus on building community in your learning. In space exploration, every aspect of translating a scientific proposal from idea to operational in flight depends on the collaboration of people from all different disciplines and backgrounds. In my work, artificial intelligence applications are inextricable from the human operators, scientists, and engineers they support. Ultimately, I'm grateful to my classmates and professors for helping me develop the collaborative skills to advocate for my ideas and engage with others’.

A valuable skill

As a math major, many of my courses emphasized proof-writing by constructing rigorous logical arguments with the evidence and mathematical tools at hand. Although I’m not proving theorems these days, having spent the past two years demonstrating that our autonomous flight software can be trusted to protect and advance the scientific objectives of a multi-billion dollar Mars rover mission, I’ve found that analytical framework critical to my work.

What I think about

I’m passionate about the role that autonomy can play in helping spacecraft make more complex decisions to advance science by deciding where to collect samples, how to analyze them, and what type of data to report back to operators when possible. It’s a privilege to get to work on making sure we get the best science returns from our spacecraft and ensuring that all stakeholders can trust the autonomy that we deploy is crucial to that mission.