Sitaraman Awarded NSF Graduate Research Fellowship
By Adam Kohlhaas
Anupama (Anu) Sitaraman, a Ph.D. student in the Software and Societal Systems Department (S3D), has received a fellowship as part of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP).
The fellowship, one of the nation's most competitive for early career researchers, provides three years of financial support over a five-year period to graduate students pursuing research-based degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. It is designed to ensure the vitality and diversity of the U.S. scientific and engineering workforce.
Sitaraman's research centers on the intersection of computing and sustainability, with a focus on carbon-aware machine learning systems, distributed ledgers for carbon provenance and supply-chain security. Her current work explores how to design methodologies and systems that reduce emissions from computing workloads. Those techniques could include shifting machine learning tasks across geographic regions or time periods to take advantage of greener energy sources, developing tools for life cycle carbon assessment of machine learning models, and investigating incentive structures cloud providers could use to encourage sustainable computing practices.
Her interest in computational decarbonization stems from a lifelong connection to the natural environment and a commitment to equitable sustainability. Before joining CMU, Sitaraman earned a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she conducted research on renewable energy adoption, household decarbonization strategies and equitable access to sustainability technologies. Her work earned recognition as a UMass Rising Researcher and received the Best Student Poster Award at the 2023 IEEE International Green and Sustainable Computing Conference.
Sitaraman is advised by S3D Professor Yuvraj Agarwal in CMU's Synergy Lab and is part of the NSF Expeditions in Computing grant on computational decarbonization.
Learn more about the fellowship on the NSF GRFP website.