I recently graduated from Lehigh University with an honors dual degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering and Financial Engineering, through the Integrated Business & Engineering program. In Fall 2026, I'm starting as a Ph.D. student in Informatics in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences at UC Irvine.

Curiosity has led me into some interesting rooms: elementary schools in Kazakhstan, accessibility research with blind and low-vision users, and classrooms in India navigating hybrid learning. Each project comes with its own users, its own language, its own idea of what "useful" means. I've learned that the part I enjoy most is walking into a new room and figuring out what actually matters to the people in it.

That's meant working across both qualitative and quantitative methods — I've done research at Lehigh's Data, Algorithms and Society Lab, on the Save Tuba sustainability app, and as a Ruhr Fellow at the Technical University of Dortmund.

Outside of research, I enjoy working out, trying out new cuisines, exploring new matcha cafes, and upcycling old clothes into new pieces.

Starting my Ph.D. in Informatics at UC Irvine this fall. Always happy to talk research, collaborations, or opportunities to work together. Reach out at agavade@uci.edu.