Hi! Bonjour
I’m Arushi Nath, a Grade 11 public school student in Toronto. I like listening to pop music, rock climbing, and putting large chunks of my time into using open science to solve hard problems that interest me.
I am currently working on:
Strengthening Planetary Defense: I characterize near-Earth asteroids—measuring their rotation periods, searching for satellites, and inferring their physical properties. These parameters are critical if humanity ever needs to deflect a potentially hazardous object.
Finding Multi-planetary Exoplanet Systems: I undertake large-parameter N-body simulations to model how planets gravitationally interact with one another. By measuring subtle “wobbles” in transit timing (transit-timing variations), I search for evidence of unseen planets in multiplanetary systems.
I’m drawn to these problems because the data is both big and small at the same time. We must sift through enormous amounts of data to find the few measurements that matter. And those measurements are often sparse, incomplete, noisy, and non-repeatable! Whether it is an asteroid observed only a few nights every few years, or an exoplanet system with just a single observed transit, the challenge is the same: how far can we push open science, open data, open algorithms, open communities, and ingenuity to extract new knowledge?
And then there is a thrill of finding the unknown, and the unknown unknowns. For example: how would the mutual orbital period of a binary asteroid change after a kinetic impactor mission, and would the rotation period change too?
Outside of astronomy, I enjoy applying the same open science approach to problems closer to home, where impact is more immediately measurable. Through hackathons and civic-tech projects, I analyze open municipal data to build tools that help identify city issues and make them easier to report and fix. It allows young people who are unable to vote to feel empowered to make a differnce.
Over the past 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. One of my favourites was becoming a Global Winner of the NASA Space Apps Challenge COVID-19 Challenge among more than 2,000 teams from 150 countries, after which I was invited by NASA to witness a rocket launch. Interestingly, that project merged my interests in space and pop music!
Interested in learning more?
- My work on astronomy: www.MonitorMyPlanet.com
- My work on robots, AI, and rovers: www.HotPopRobot.com
- My work on using technology to build better cities: www.bettermycity.com
Contact me via the form or at arushi@monitormyplanet.com