Spotlight: Mahima Arora and Autonomous Vehicle Testing

When Mahima Arora was a kid, she used to watch engineering shows, specifically one called Engineering Connections. These shows fostered a sense of problem-solving and served as an inspiration to solve different engineering problems in the world around her.

That interest continued in undergrad when she majored in mechatronics engineering — a field that combines many disciplines from computer to electronic and mechanical engineering, with a focus on building and designing machines that have multiple components. 

Her interest in engineering, though, focused on the field of robotics. She obtained a master’s degree in robotics from the University of Maryland, and thanks to encouragement from one of her professors, she joined NIST through the Professional Research Experience Program (PREP).

As a robotics engineer at NIST, Mahima works on systems interactions of the four core parts — artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, sensors and communication — of autonomous vehicles (AV).

Mahima and her group aim to address big questions such as: How do the different systems interact with each other? If something goes wrong in one system, how does that affect the performance of the vehicle?

Tackling such challenges is part of what makes the research so exciting for her. “I’m at the beginning of one of the biggest innovations in transportation.”