Roshan
Taneja

researcher / student — berkeley, ca

  • deployed 500 rainwater harvesting units with the Maasai of Northern Tanzania — 30,000 people served
  • forecasting iceberg drift in the Labrador Sea with Kalman filters
  • redistricting at the UC Berkeley Statewide Database
  • resume.pdf — one page
01 / Now
Current sprint
ANZA-ELT
Location
Berkeley, CA (UTC−7)
02 / Research
SiteWhat
Arusha, TZRainwater for the Maasai — Sentinel-2 · Northern Tanzania
Labrador SeaCalving in the Labrador Sea — ICESat-2 · 55–65°N
Berkeley, CAStatewide Database — California redistricting data infrastructure
03 / Projects featured — all projects
NameOne line
DrawMyCAdeck.gl community-mapping tool for California redistricting. Renders 102,000 census blocks as a single WebGL layer with Pan, Box, Lasso, and Erase selection on a custom CPU geometry engine, so the smallest blocks select reliably at any zoom. Slated for the redistricting commission's 2030 census cycle.
WaTER VisionSatellite ML models identifying Maasai settlements across 10,000+ image tiles to optimise rainwater harvesting unit placement in Northern Tanzania. NeurIPS 2024 MLSI winner; expanded to new geographies with Harvard's Center for Geographic Analysis.
Maji Wells — Water ProgramsFundraised $300,000 to deploy 500 rainwater harvesting units serving 30,000 Maasai across Tanzania. 2024 United Nations SDG #6 Award and Children's Peace Prize nomination.
STAR monorepo (STAR)ESP32-S3 board firmware (PT, TC, RTD, LC, ATCOMM), a packed-binary UDP wire protocol, and a C++/TypeScript ground DAQ pipeline for liquid-engine hotfires across 13 networked boards. Tuned the actuator/valve board's hotfire state machine: heartbeat timeout, abort, and connection-loss transitions.
icespyICESat-2 photon → Kalman drift forecast pipeline. Powers /icebergs.
04 / Publications

Poster Presentation — AI for Climate & Conservation (AICC) @ eurIPS 2025 — eurIPS 2025

  • Poster presentation at the AICC workshop, eurIPS 2025 — Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Satellite ML for rainwater harvesting unit placement in Maasai regions of Northern Tanzania

Remote Sensing and Machine Learning for Water Accessibility in Maasai Regions — NeurIPS 2024

  • 1 of 4 Winners — NeurIPS 2024 Machine Learning for Social Impact High School Track; selected from global submissions, 14,000 attendees
  • Presented at NeurIPS Convention 2024 in Vancouver
  • Provisional Patent (Approved) — US Patent Application 63/703,232 "Object Detection in Satellite Imagery for Optimising Rainwater Unit Placement"
  • Sole High-school Keynote Presenter at ML4EO 2024, Univ. of Exeter, UK
  • Published in National High School Journal of Science [Dec 2024]

Impact of Rainwater Harvesting Units on 4,500+ Maasai in Northern Tanzania — NHSJS Oct 2024

  • Published in National High School Journal of Science [Oct 2024]
  • 2024 United Nations SDG #6 Award and Children's Peace Prize nomination (Maji Wells water programs)
  • Presidential Volunteer Service Award — Gold Medal [300+ Hours]
  • Presented at MDCON23 [Multi-District East-Africa Convention] Audience of 600+ delegates
  • Melvin Jones Humanitarian Service Award
05 / Writing newest first

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06 / Contact