Welcome!

HI I'M ROMITA

The primary focus of my career is helping the world move towards a more sustainable future. I approach most sustainability issues with a technical standpoint but have the firm belief that an overarching approach is needed in order to consider the very real financial, social, and political challenges that exist in the space.

Below you'll find my timeline and key interests. Take a look around and explore my work :)

More About Me

Resume

Academia

Purdue University B.S.

Johns Hopkins M.S.

-Electrical Engineering-

Focus: Controls + AI

Art

The same creativity that makes me an artist enables me to think out of the box in regards to engineering problems.

Industry

I have navigated businesses from the size of a small start up to one of the world's largest corporations.

Sustainability

At its core, sustainability is for humanity. The most vulnerable communities have the most to gain from sustainable tech.

Timeline
The important bits to me.

Started deltaQ Earth - 09/23

DeltaQ Earth has been my own personal response as to the sustainability issue. It's a non-profit figuring out how to enable vulnerable communities to gain independence by adopting sustainable tech. A core principle is that more people of diverse backgrounds need to be involved in problem solving with sustainable tech. I have referred to my own independent research and have written the articles on the platform.

To visit: deltaq.earth

Joined ElectrifyDC as a Technical Advisor - 07/23

One day this lady, Vanessa, I knew from Sierra Club DC emailed me on a random Saturday at noon. Unknowingly I got roped into becoming the main technical point on an RFA to size the solar power hosting capacity for Washington DC.'s power grid. From then I've worked on multiple RFAs for the DOEE with her. And we're planning a fair with the DOEE and DOB to accelerate electrification in the district.

To visit: electrifydc.org

Graduated from Johns Hopkins with a Masters in Electrical Engineering - 05/23

Somehow graduated from Hopkins in two years. I couldn't have done it without the support of my friends and the community I found in DC. I had so much fun each semester learning something new and applying it to a different sustainability issue. Microgrids was my most common topic .

It was definitely a challenge because I went through two jobs while completing my Masters. I learned a lot about time management and balance because Amazon and Hopkins were both incredibly challenging. But I learned and experienced so much.

Find my research here: Projects

DMV Dance Community - 12/22

Went back to dance for the first time after undergrad. I found a new dance community and they were super welcoming. Ended up meeting some of my best friends through dance. Been exposed to so many different types of dance. My background was Odissi and Bharatnatyam growing up with some urban in college. Now it's just my own way of movement and expression.

Washington DC Art Exhibitions - 05/22 -> 10/22

I took a long break from art when I was completing my undergrad at Purdue. I had been an artist studying art since I was only 8 in adult classes. I'd won scholastics, regional, and state competitions. But I was an art student only after my break and return I became an artist with my own voice.

After moving to DC, I applied to show in some art exhibitions. The network I made from my first exhibition led me to more opportunities to showcase my work across the district at various venues and events. Currently I'm working on some stuff to have a series to showcase.

Moving to DC & Full-time at Hopkins - 01/22

Moved mid/post-COVID to DC to start a new life and attend Hopkins in person with a fully loaded schedule while ramping up at Amazon.

Started at Amazon & Left Aptiv & Finished 1st semester of grad school at Hopkins - 12/21

It was one chaotic month. I signed an offer with Amazon as an SDET in the beginning of December. I had studied computer science OOP stuff for three weeks just for the interviews. I did not study any object oriented programming language in college. So I learned everything on the job.

I left my position at Aptiv because it didn't align with my goals in sustainability. There was a time that I thought my place was in the automotive industry because transportation was the largest producer of CO2 emissions. But I wanted my impact to be more direct. And to be confident in my abilities.

There were two weeks between me leaving Aptiv and starting at Amazon, One week I finished my finals - project and exams for my 1st semester. I wrote a cool paper on assessing the system of a solar wind system using stochastic optimization for DC. Writing that paper gave me the confidence to keep doing my own research.

The second week I woke up drove to DC from Ohio and hunted for apartments. I'm really happy with the decisions I made that month.

Graduated from Purdue with BS in Electrical Engineering & Started at Aptiv - 05/20

Graduated from Purdue with a BS in EE and a minor in Math.

A good end because the organization I founded, Big Data Big Impact, held its first hackathon and Purdue's first ever datathon. It was done virtually which was unheard of before then. I managed to change the whole event from being in person to virtual - we had speakers, a learning series, and a competition. The solutions for mitigating wildfires through data and tech were so cool. The winning team was a pair of grad students in Economics. That showed me how important diversity in sustainable tech is.

Joined Aptiv as a Systems and Software Engineer. I wrote embedded software that went onto the vehicles using the front facing camera for any active safety features

Lyft L5 & Found my cat Mazy & Founded BDBI - 2019

Worked at Lyft Level 5 Self Driving as a radar engineer and then a systems software engineer. Ended up publishing a novel process for model based software and it was applied to the Motion Controls Unit - braking, propulsion, steering - some highly critical safety parts of a vehicle.

Can read it here: Model Based Software Process

When I came back to school in the fall, a little trash cat followed me home and now she's been with me since then. The trash cat is now a well fed cat named Mazikeen.

Founded an organization, Big Data Big Impact, which was Purdue's first sustainable tech organization. We were primarily focused on data driven solutions. Our first project we tried solving recycling, and we pinpointed the problem to the actual collection. So we started a project called RecycleSort that would optically sort recyclables with a model trained to identify specific types of recyclables like aluminum cans vs water bottles. Got a lot of students involved. Planned the hackathon too. It was a good productive organzation.