In recognition of the pivotal role that community plays in creating access to STEM success and the importance of collaboration for equity, justice, and inclusive excellence in STEM fields, it is with great enthusiasm that I recommend Arav Gupta for the Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Award. Arav Gupta has demonstrated exceptional leadership in promoting inclusivity within the robotics community through their outstanding initiative in organizing an inclusive farm robotics challenge and hackathons and educational programs. Whether short-term or long-term programming, Arav brings people together in creative, safe teams, addresses conflict, and puts the control of robots into others hands, making everyone an innovator. They have actively recruited participants from historically underrepresented communities and created a supportive environment where everyone feels valued and empowered to contribute to computer science, robotics, engineering and agriculture. Through their visionary leadership, Arav has not only broken down barriers but has also made significant strides in making technology more accessible and comfortable for all participants meeting groups at their convenience, running individual trainings, tabling, fostering a culture of equity and inclusion that serves as a model for our institution and beyond.
In one specific occasion, Arav worked tirelessly to test and assemble the technology so that students could autonomously drive robots from their own computer and created curriculum by which everyone coded the robot and manually drove the bot. I observed many women, who are just 19% of the School of Engineering, came to the event and participated in the Hack the Valley, and stayed until the end because the environment was comfortable and open.
Arav Gupta has been a trusted intern with CITRIS & the Banatao Institute before running our web development team at VISTA. After witnessing his inclusive program management, I promoted him to Ag Innovation Lead with the Farms, Food, Future Innovation Initiative and he has helped others see and access their futures in technology and agriculture. The honor of this award would mean a lot to him as he is more than a technologist, but a tech community builder. Thank you for your consideration.
