MIT senior Sadhana Lolla has been awarded the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship, providing her with the opportunity to pursue graduate studies in her chosen field at Cambridge University in the U.K.
The Gates Cambridge Scholarship, established in 2000, offers full-cost post-graduate scholarships to exceptional applicants from countries outside of the U.K. The scholarship’s mission is to create a global network of future leaders dedicated to enhancing the lives of others.
Originally from Clarksburg, Maryland, Lolla is currently a senior majoring in computer science with minors in mathematics and literature. At Cambridge, she will be pursuing an MPhil in technology policy.
With a goal to lead discussions on the deployment and development of technology for marginalized communities, such as her family’s rural Indian village, Lolla also plans to conduct research in embodied intelligence.
At MIT, Lolla is involved in research on safe and reliable robotics and deep learning at the Distributed Robotics Laboratory under Professor Daniela Rus. Her research encompasses strategies for debiasing autonomous vehicles and streamlining robotic design processes. Additionally, she contributes to creating uncertainty-aware frameworks for deep learning at Microsoft Research and Themis AI, with applications in computational biology, language modeling, and robotics. Lolla has presented her work at prestigious conferences such as the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).
Outside of her research, Lolla leads initiatives to make computer science education more accessible globally. She instructs in MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning course, reaching millions of students annually, and serves as curriculum lead for Momentum AI, a program that teaches AI to underserved students. She has also taught students in Northern Scotland through the MIT Global Teaching Labs program.
Lolla has also served as director for xFair, MIT’s largest student-run career fair, and is an executive board member for Next Sing, where she works to promote a cappella music across diverse musical backgrounds. In her leisure time, she enjoys singing, solving crossword puzzles, and baking.
Kim Benard, associate dean of distinguished fellowships in Career Advising and Professional Development, commends Lolla’s accomplishments, stating, “Between Sadhana’s impressive research in the Distributed Robotics Group, her volunteer teaching with Momentum AI, and her internship and extracurricular experiences, she has developed the skills to be a leader. Her work at Cambridge will provide her the opportunity to delve into reducing bias in systems and the ethical implications of her work. I am proud that she will be representing MIT in the Gates Cambridge community.”
