Ria Das

About Ria Das

Born in New York and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire, Ria Das didn’t know she was American until she was twelve. Her childhood was filled with quintessentially New England activities, from shoveling snow after nor’easters to watching Tom Brady on TV. But her parents, immigrants from India, had always used “American” to mean “white.” Ria only realized she too was American after nearly failing a pop quiz that asked for her nationality.

Still, as she grew up in one of the least diverse states in the country, Ria knew that the label alone wasn’t enough. She struggled to feel like she belonged and spent many nights brooding over the social inequalities she observed in her newly diversifying hometown. Feeling pressure to make good on her parents’ immigrant sacrifices, however, she decided to bury these more social interests and commit herself to STEM, subjects she also enjoyed.

Ultimately, Ria discovered that viewing her life as a vehicle for pursuing what she felt she owed others—her parents, her family—always had an expiration date. In her case, she drove that vehicle through computer science undergraduate studies at MIT to a PhD at Stanford University before it broke down. She realized then she wouldn’t be happy unless she healed the issues of belonging and identity she’d buried since childhood. So, she stepped off the academic treadmill by taking leave from her PhD to answer these questions.

Turns out, that was exactly what she needed. During her leave, Ria hopped around the country, first renting a room in an activists’ co-op in Oakland, then moving to New York to work at an AI research nonprofit. Living in majority-minority cities with vibrant immigrant enclaves taught her what it meant to belong in a community, city, and country. Seeing that the happiest people she met were those pursuing their deepest passions gave her the courage to do the same.

At her nonprofit, Basis Research Institute, Ria went on to found and grow an urban data team that worked with the United States government (Census Bureau, Department of Commerce, and New York City Department of City Planning) on issues of economic and housing equity, blending her interests in science and social problems. She then reapplied to an MIT EECS PhD program, where today she studies how people undergo conceptual change with the aim of building more robust, accessible systems for automated (social) science, as well as improving education design, with Joshua Tenenbaum. Looking ahead, she hopes to one day become a professor collaborating closely with practitioners in policy.