Research
My PhD research is on wildfire resilience. I build graph neural network models that capture how wildfire risk and its impacts spread across connected landscapes, infrastructure, and communities, so they can be anticipated and planned for.
More broadly, my work sits at the intersection of machine learning and environmental sustainability, developing data-driven approaches to assess and mitigate environmental risk. I use machine learning and statistical inference to model environmental and infrastructure systems, often with multimodal and geospatial data. My interests span climate resilience, sustainable resource management, energy and water systems, climate risk forecasting and adaptation, and responsible, sustainable AI that can inform policy and large-scale sustainability efforts. Running through all of it is a focus on equitable disaster recovery, so the models guiding relief and rebuilding don’t overlook the people & ecosystems who need help most.
Interests
- Wildfire resilience
- Graph neural networks
- Multimodal & geospatial ML
- Climate AI
- Climate risk forecasting & adaptation
- Environmental sustainability
- Equitable disaster recovery
Publications
Assessing global environmental sustainability via an unsupervised clustering framework
A. Paulvannan Kanmani, R. Obringer, B. Rachunok, R. Nateghi
Sustainability 12(2), 563 (2020) · from my master’s thesis with Dr. Roshi Nateghi at Purdue
Experience
Before starting my PhD, I spent several years building machine learning systems in industry.
AmazonApplied Scientist · 2022–2026
- Built daily demand-forecasting models across Amazon’s device portfolio, automating planning at scale.
- Expanded a semantic retrieval system so customer-service assistants could give context-aware answers.
- Shipped an anomaly-detection pipeline that caught operational defects early.
American AirlinesSenior Data Scientist · 2019–2022
- Built an NLP recommender over aircraft maintenance logs that cut rework by 65%.
- Modeled at-risk aircraft to sharpen maintenance prioritization and safety.
- Deployed personalized marketing models that improved customer engagement.
Education
Texas A&M UniversityPhD, Civil Engineering (AI track) · present
Multimodal and geospatial AI for community and ecosystem resilience.
Purdue UniversityMS, Industrial Engineering
Master’s thesis on global environmental sustainability with Dr. Roshi Nateghi.
IIT MadrasBTech · minor in Operations Research
Undergraduate thesis on copper-foam electrodeposition for wastewater denitrification, with Dr. Lakshman Neelakantan.
Beyond
Mentorship
Mentoring matters to me. I’ve worked with junior women engineers and scientists through the women’s employee resource groups at Amazon and American Airlines, where I helped people move into data science and grow early in their careers. I was also a teaching assistant for more than 300 students at Purdue. As a woman of color in STEM, I try to help others feel like they belong in technical spaces.
Outside work
When I’m not working, I’m usually outdoors. I enjoy hiking to alpine lakes, camping in the summers, skiing in the winters, and spending as much time as I can in nature with my husband & our dog, Sophie. Being in these places is a big part of why I want to help protect them.
Contact
I’m always glad to talk about geospatial AI, climate resilience, or finding a way into the field.