Gender barriers did not stop this PhD grad from pursuing her goals
Anya Chaturvedi is completing her PhD in computer science this spring. Photo by Andy DeLisle/ASU
Editor’s note: This story is part of a series of profiles of notable spring 2026 graduates.
Originally from Kanpur, India, Anya Chaturvedi’s academic journey has been shaped by both curiosity and resilience.
As an undergraduate, she emerged as an advocate for equitable access to academic resources. In some parts of the country, policies often framed around safety restricted female students’ full participation in campus life, like limited access to libraries and extracurricular activities.
Determined to pursue research on her own terms, she eventually found her way to Arizona State University to work with her now PhD advisor, President's Professor Andrea Richa, whose research in distributed algorithms and bio-inspired systems aligned with her interests.
At the Biodesign Institute, working with Richa and Assistant Professor Joshua Daymude at the Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society, Chaturvedi explored how systems with no central authority can still coordinate effectively. Her work focuses on distributed computing theory, often drawing inspiration from biological systems.
“Working here changed how I think about the gap between what we prove and what can actually be built,” she said. “You learn what is feasible in practice, not just what works on paper.”
Through her work at Biodesign, she received an Outstanding Research Award and the Outstanding Mentorship Award from ASU's Graduate Student Government.
As vice president of external affairs at Graduate Student Government, Chaturvedi has advocated for greater inclusion and support for graduate students, including ensuring that international students have a platform to voice their concerns.
After completing her PhD in computer science this spring, she plans to pursue a postdoctoral position in theoretical computer science, with the ultimate aim of returning to India as a professor. There, she hopes to expand access to research opportunities for female students in STEM.
“I have learned a lot from my time at ASU that I was never exposed to during my undergraduate degree,” she said. “I want to take that back and make sure students (back in India) receive similar opportunities.”
Read more about Chaturvedi’s experience at ASU below.
Note: Answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Question: What was your “aha” moment when you realized you wanted to study the field you majored in?
Answer: During my master's, Professor Richa encouraged me to take a bio-inspired algorithms course under Stephanie Forrest, and I was honestly intimidated. I was one of the only non-PhD students in the room. (For a project) we studied how turtle ants reroute their trails when a branch breaks: no eyes, no direct communication, just pheromones and environmental cues. These are real resource-constrained agents, solving coordination problems in a completely decentralized way, which we struggle to do in computing. Could we deploy robots with limited memory that coordinate purely through environmental signals? That question never quite left me, and it's still at the core of what I work on.
Q: What’s something you learned here that surprised you or changed your perspective?
A: Working in an interdisciplinary environment can teach a lot to the people working in theory. We learn what is feasible to implement in practice rather than making assumptions that would never hold.
Q: What is an important lesson your mentor at Biodesign Institute has taught you?
A: Early on, (Richa) made sure I asked at least one question at every talk or conference I attended. It helps you pay attention differently when you know you have to come away with something worth asking. The flip side is being on the receiving end. She often puts her students on the spot to present their work, and whether the audience is researchers in your own area or someone with no background in it at all, you learn to explain yourself from the ground up. Those questions force you to revisit assumptions you had stopped questioning, and you come away understanding your own work better than before.
Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’d give to those still in school?
A: Everyone talks about learning to say no, and that matters, but I think there's equal power in saying yes, especially early on. Every experience outside your immediate work adds something you didn't expect. More often than not, the things that scared me most going in are the ones I'm most glad I did.
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