Hi, I’m Arushi Nath, a Grade 11 public school student in Toronto who likes solving hard problems about space and society using open open science, open data, and open communities.

My work sits at the intersection of planetary defense, exoplanet science, and public good. I’m motivated by a simple question: how much can we infer when we don’t have enough data? Whether it’s an asteroid observed only a few nights every few years or an exoplanet system which may have multiple planets, the challenge is the same — extracting science from sparse, noisy observations.

In astronomy, I build algorithms that turn space and ground-based sky survey data and small-telescope observations into meaningful physical insight. I’ve worked on problems such as:

• inferring asteroid rotation periods, shapes, and surface properties from uneven lightcurves,

• evaluating deflection mission success when physical parameters are poorly constrained,

• and predicting unseen exoplanets using transit timing variations rather than direct detection.

These projects rely heavily on open data (sky surveys, public ephemerides), open science (reproducible pipelines, transparent assumptions), and open communities — collaborating with observers, reviewers, and mentors across institutions rather than working in isolation.

I care just as much about how science is done as what it discovers. That’s why I focus on building open source tools and workflows that others can reuse: photometry pipelines, modeling frameworks, and clearly documented methods that scale from student observatories to next-generation surveys.

Outside astronomy, I apply the same approach to problems closer to home. Through hackathons and civic projects, I use open municipal data to identify failures in public systems and design practical, evidence-based fixes. The domain changes, but the method doesn’t: define the problem precisely, understand the data’s limitations, and design solutions that real people can use.

Over the last ten years, I have built robots, battlebots, rockets, drones, submarines, and rovers. I have participated in over 50 hackathons and won many national and international awards. In 2020, my project, the Masked Scales, was the Global Winner of the NASA SpaceApps Covid-19 Challenge among 2,000 teams from 150 countries.

• My work on robots, AI, rovers: www.HotPopRobot.com
• My work on using technology for better cities: www.bettermycity.com

Contact me via the form or at arushi@monitormyplanet.com