Pavitra received B.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Physics from the University of Southern California, and recently, an SM in Electrical Engineering from MIT. Her Masters research, at the Biomechatronics Group and the Neuroscience Statistics Lab, focused on modeling ankle function in gait to motivate design and control of ankle prostheses. Previously she has designed high voltage RF circuits and bioMEMs setups to study apoptosis in cancer cells, worked on novel tumor treatment devices, and developed embedded systems for healthcare monitoring.