Niaja is a detailed oriented software developer with over 10 years of programming experience. She embodies a lifelong passion for learning, helping others and tackling new problems. In 2016, she completed her PhD from MIT in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. While at MIT, she designed, built and tested the motors for a quadruped cheetah robot. For her PhD work she explored how wearables can be used to induce behavior change through the development of several applications and user studies. After graduation she spent 8 months in Japan working with IBM Tokyo. Her contribution included teaching Pepper, a humanoid robot, how to assist the growing elderly population in Japan. Currently, she works as software developer at CNN building the content management system that will power cnn.com.

Pronouns: She/Her