For years, Preksha Sarda, a senior from Ames, Iowa, has patiently observed her father — a physician — and how, though he poured his soul into his work, he sometimes was not able to help the patient. Sometimes, due to human limitations, diagnoses came too late or treatment too inaccessible to change the outcome.
Every problem has multiple paths to a solution. Sarda wants to improve health care, including accessibility and affordability for all, but she isn't starting from the patient perspective. She believes the problem goes deeper, to the very core of the digital infrastructure used in the medical system today.
"There's all these other problems, and doctors are not really the ones that can solve it. With a CS degree…you've got this whole realm of things that you can now tackle," she said. "There's so many ways you can apply all these theoretical applications and things like that to help for detection purposes and preventative measures."
After her sophomore year at Rose-Hulman, Sarda completed a Research Experience for Undergraduates at Johns Hopkins University in the Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics. She worked on simulations of surgical robots for an autonomous partial nephrectomy — a kidney tumor removal surgery — and was one of the only computer science specialists on the team responsible for an enormous C++ code base.
"I was surrounded by a bunch of robots, and I was just cutting out tissues, trying to figure out motion-planning things for the robot's arms," Sarda said. She had bounded down the hall of the Fowler Academic Building when she learned she had been accepted into the program, screaming her excitement for all to hear, and that energy continued to buoy her throughout the summer. "Even now, I cannot believe that I was around so many smart people," Sarda said. "It was cool to see all of them deal with those different components…it's a very multidisciplinary field."
Beyond robotics, Sarda also envisions great potential for artificial intelligence and large language models (LLMs), to supplement human brainpower and abilities in medicine. Last summer, she interned at Telemetry Sports (which has since been acquired by Teamworks), helping develop a product for large-scale clinical text summarization. Sarda and her mentor spoke with several physicians and medical students, ensuring that the product met their needs. "I had never really built a system like that that's trying to leverage (LLMs) in a positive way to summarize and extract information," she said.
The internship expanded Sarda's knowledge surrounding applications of artificial intelligence knowledge from her time as a Rose Research Fellow, though the projects were not directly related. During her paid research project with a faculty mentor through the Rose Research Fellows program, she studied the inverse design of a robust photonic crystal for early cancer detection using artificial intelligence. Sarda credits this opportunity from her second year at Rose-Hulman with helping her land her research experience at Johns Hopkins and her internship at Teamworks.
"I was really fortunate to learn early on in Rose that you've got to ask questions when you're confused," she said. "People want to teach. People want to help. When you have an environment like that, you've got to match the energy, match the level." Matching energies comes naturally to Sarda. She connected with her father through their shared calling to improve health care but also delighted in connecting with her parents through another passion: music.
As a teen, Sarda whirled around the ice rink in dizzying fashion, flying through the air to the pulsing rhythm of Bollywood music. She felt free as she twirled, the wind of her own motion ruffling through both her hair and her costume. Figure skating — and her choice of music — reinvigorated her.
When Sarda came to Rose-Hulman and discovered that Terre Haute didn't have a skating rink, she sought new ways to channel that magic that she had felt on the ice, and, finding none, resolved to create her own.
Rose Naach, which is open to all Rose-Hulman students, now has over 30 members and performs at several campus celebrations. As they've grown, they've welcomed members from all backgrounds, including several who are not of Indian descent, as well as a few faculty and staff members for guest appearances during performances.
Much like she has created space for campus to rejoice through dance, Sarda has also created space for others to dance toward computer science, working to start a chapter of Girls Who Code at a local middle school. The Noblitt Scholar was named to Rose-Hulman's first Computer Science & Software Engineering Advisory Board, where she works alongside faculty and fellow students to influence and enhance the department for current and future students. She also helped to revitalize the Women Of Like Professions Passionate About Computing (WOLFPAC) organization and secured funding for them to attend the Grace Hopper Celebration in Chicago.
Sarda, too, is making a difference. From her earliest days noting how to help her father help patients, to her current campus endeavors, each of Sarda's pursuits are rooted in helping others have a better quality of life, whether through their professional passions, their whole health, or a delightful dance. She is always looking to the future for creative solutions to common problems, choreographing innovations for others who may not yet even hear the music.