Welcoming Inaugural PiTech Runway Startup Postdoc, Priya Donti

Priya Donti

PiTech Runway Startup Postdoc

The Public Interest Technology (PiTech) Initiative at Cornell Tech is thrilled to welcome its inaugural PiTech Runway Startup Postdoc, Priya Donti, to the Runway Startup cohort this fall. Priya will work on scaling her nonprofit Climate Change AI, which aims to catalyze impactful work at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. 

“Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of our time, requiring the mobilization of many different tools and approaches from across society,” says Priya. “Through our work at Climate Change AI, we aim to foster the use of machine learning in ways that support and strengthen climate change efforts.” 

Since its founding in 2019, Climate Change AI’s activities have focused on priming the entire innovation pipeline from research through deployment by identifying key opportunities, providing education and infrastructure, and enabling multi-stakeholder partnerships. For instance, the nonprofit has provided digital educational resources, events and platforms for knowledge exchange, expert advice to policy-makers, and $2M in Innovation Grants to fund research and the creation of catalytic datasets. Their initiatives have drawn thousands of participants from across academia, industry, policy, and civil society.

Priya recently finished her Ph.D. in Computer Science & Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon. Her research focused on machine learning for forecasting, optimization, and control in high-renewables power grids. Prior to that, she was a Thomas J. Watson Fellow studying the technologies and policies behind next-generation power grids, and she will start as an Assistant Professor at MIT EECS in Fall 2023. In the meantime, she looks forward to taking advantage of the many resources offered by the Runway Startup program and making meaningful connections with the Cornell Tech community. We are very excited to welcome her on campus!