Esha Pillai is currently a senior at West Windsor Plainsboro High School South in West Windsor, NJ. A young woman deeply inspired by the arts, she is a regional first prize winner for Indian dance form Bharatanatyam and was top award winner in the Golden Key international piano festival for multiple years. After many years of tennis, Esha found her athletic niche and has found success as a varsity member of the girls Sabre fencing team.
As a student seeking to bridge the extracurricular and intellectual aspects of her journey, she is an avid student of data science who has completed several independent projects that have interdisciplinary interactions between data, sports and current real-world situations. She is able to make interdisciplinary connections between her love for fencing and interests in data science and cognitive science. Using a fencing robot that she created using a Raspberry Pi computer, Esha is analyzing fencers’ reaction time data to varied situations simulating real life conditions. This analysis will help fencers train to increase fencing speed, lower reaction times etc. She is currently using the robot to help her 9 year old twin brothers keep up with their training during the COVID shutdown. Her fencing club, Sebastiani Fencing has expressed great interest to test and use the robot when they reopen.
Esha also understands that data can actually be used to have social impact. She has present her findings on mass shooting to a congressman and has worked with his office on a summer internship analyzing data. Aligned with the interest in social impact, Esha is part of the women’s empowerment club at her school and runs a non-profit online shop called The Pink Power Project to sell handicraft products produced by underprivileged women in India through the non-profit Vidya. The revenues are to be used in support of several women’s charities in the US and in India.
Finally, during the COVID lockdown she has designed and printed K95 face masks using her parents 3D printer. She is also printing face shields to donate to a state government hospital in Karaikal, India.