UAlbany Doctoral Candidate Selected for NASA Internship

Vasuda Trehan.

International student Vasuda Trehan is heading to Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland this summer 2025. She was selected for this highly competitive internship at NASA, a vision in the making.

Vasuda, a doctoral candidate-research scientist, chose the educational rigor of the University at Albany not once but twice, for her earned Master's and a PhD she's currently pursuing. From India, Vasuda is well regarded as an emerging expert in her niche information science field. She began her journey in 2017 at UAlbany with a Master's in Computer Science where her thesis research and study focused in the area of machine learning and satellite data analysis (small satellite data calibration technique using machine learning).

But long before arriving to the U.S., Vasuda's dream was to become a NASA astronaut. She spent many of her days as a youth gazing at the stars and contemplating the existence of extraterrestrial life. With her strong personal motivation, Vasuda moved to California following her UAlbany Master's program where she worked for several years in the field of machine learning and as a full stack developer. While Vasuda led projects in organizations such as the Capital Group, Spartan Radar, and Ares Management, she also continued her higher education studies and earned a post-Master's certificate in data analytics from University of California Irvine.  

Then, Vasuda advanced her professional and academic trajectory by returning to UAlbany in 2022 to pursue a PhD in Information Science. To date, she has worked in various student assistant roles and adjunct taught several courses in different academic departments. In terms of her exciting research, the outstanding faculty support in her home department as well as the Department of Physics have helped excel her to the ultimate goal of working with NASA. Just in the 2023-2024 Academic Year, Vasuda presented at 13 different scientific research venues, including NASA.

Vasuda quickly gained respect and accolades from her colleagues at NASA as she makes major scientific contributions in the area of Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven computational analysis. Collaborating with Dr. Kevin Knuth in UAlbany's Department of Physics, their NASA project entails developing an AI-based library of exoplanet atmospheric spectra that will enable scientists to infer planetary properties related to planetary habitability.

As part of this NASA project team, Vasuda is specifically writing and advancing the algorithm absolutely necessary for the success of this project, an algorithm which is projected to soon surpass the capability of what's currently available in the field. Vasuda's team is working on developing a 30-dimensional algorithm using 30 planetary parameters to predict the atmospheric absorption spectrum, which would be considered a major scientific feat.

The timing of Vasuda's NASA project and UAlbany's AI Plus Initiative is quite fortuitous. During the 2024-2025 Academic Year, Vasuda plans to share in the applications of the new supercomputing clusters in helping further her UAlbany research and attaining her desired results for the NASA project algorithm.  

Now, Vasuda continues her role at NASA with a prominent summer internship at Goddard. In this strategic professional path Vasuda has chosen, she hopes to conduct future research and development inside places like the International Space Station or on an upcoming U.S. space flight mission, even as perhaps the first Indian woman in space.