Hi! Bonjour

I am Arushi Nath, a Grade 11 public school student in Toronto. I enjoy 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 study asteroids that pass near Earth by finding how fast they rotate, whether they have small companions moons, and what they are made of. This information is useful if we ever need to safely change the path of an asteroid that could threaten Earth.

• Finding Multi-planetary Exoplanet Systems: I simulate hundreds of thousands of multi-planet systems to study how planets tug on each other through gravity. By measuring tiny changes in timing of when a planet passes in front of its star (transit-timing variations), I can uncover hidden planets, and their orbital and physical parameters.

I’m drawn to these problems because the data is both big and small at the same time. I sift through large datasets generated by space and ground based telescopes to find the few measurements that matter. And those measurements are often sparse, incomplete, noisy, and may not be repeatable in decades. 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 I can push open science, open data, open algorithms, open communities, and ingenuity to extract new knowledge?

And then there is also the thrill of discovering the unknown. and the unknown unknowns. For example, how would the mutual orbital period of a binary asteroid change after a kinetic impactor mission? Could it trigger slow structural changes that would change their rotation period change as well?

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. This work allows young people who are unable to vote to feel empowered to make a difference.

Over the past ten years, I have built featherweight and 30lbs battlebots, rockets, drones, submarines, and rovers. I have participated in more than 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. I got invited by NASA to witness a rocket launch at the Kennedy Space Centre.

Interestingly, that project merged my interests in space and pop music!

Interested in learning more about my work?

• Astronomy research: www.MonitorMyPlanet.com
• Robots, AI, and Rovers: www.HotPopRobot.com
• Technology to build better cities: www.bettermycity.com

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