ASU Grand Challenges Scholar’s journey to becoming a NASA astronaut
Ritisha Das, an ASU Grand Challenges Scholar. Courtesy photo
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable fall 2024 graduates.
Since childhood, Ritisha Das wanted to become an astronaut. When it was time to go to college, she decided to double major in mechanical engineering and mathematics in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University as a pathway to her dream.
After four years at ASU, Das is graduating this fall with an array of accomplishments and moments she cherishes.
Das is especially proud of her work with Associate Professor Hilde Bosmans at KU Leuven as a EuroScholar researcher in Belgium to improve breast cancer detection using machine learning.
“It opened opportunities to create real change for millions of women prone to breast cancer in Belgium,” she says. “It affirmed my desire to always strive to be a humanitarian engineer.”
The trip to Belgium opened Das’ eyes to how impactful her work can be and enabled her to publish her first paper, which won first place at the EuroScholars Research Symposium under the Biomedical Sciences category.
In her final year, Das used computer simulations to explore Mars' volcanism through the ASU/NASA Space Grant internship program. Most recently, she was named a 2024 Brooke Owens Fellow, which is the top undergraduate fellowship award for women or gender minorities in the aerospace field.
Das says that as a woman in STEM, her college experience wouldn’t have been the same without a strong support system at ASU.
“I cannot begin to express how kind, thoughtful and supportive Professor Haolin Zhu has been in my journey throughout college,” she says.
As the president of Women in STEM and Model United Nations debate team at ASU, Das dedicated her time to improving the quality of local K–12 education through outreach programs and inspiring young girls and other underrepresented groups to pursue STEM through science experiments. She was also the first in ASU’s history to lead her team to attend Harvard's Olympics of Model United Nations in Taiwan, where she won the top debate award.
A Rhodes and Marshall Scholarship finalist, Das looks forward to using her skills and experiences to make a meaningful difference.
“I want to engineer humanitarian aerospace technologies and shape policy to distribute their impact in the Global South,” she says. “My dream is to be both a space diplomat for the United Nations and a NASA astronaut, leveraging policy and aerospace to serve humanitarian applications like natural disaster risk mitigation, distribution of humanitarian aid and more.”
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