Aditi Verma portrait

Aditi Verma

Assistant Professor
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email

[email protected]

Location

3003 Phoenix

Websites
Google Scholar

Fastest Path to Zero Initiative

Biography

Dr. Aditi Verma joined NERS in the Fall of 2021 as an Assistant Research Scientist and became an Assistant Professor in the Fall of 2022. She will also support and interact with the Fastest Path team as a Faculty Associate. Verma is a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’s Project on Managing the Atom, and former Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at the Belfer Center where she was jointly appointed by the Project on Managing the Atom and the International Security Program. At MIT, she was a Burchard Scholar and a Kelly-Douglas Fellow.

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Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  • S.B. (2012) in Nuclear Science and Engineering, with a humanities concentration in French
  • Ph.D. (2018) in Nuclear Science and Engineering.
  • Ph.D. dissertation: “Epistemologies of safety: A comparative study of contemporary French and American reactor design practices”

Research Interests

Dr. Aditi Verma is interested in how nuclear technologies specifically and complex technologies broadly—and their institutional infrastructures—can be designed in more just, equitable, creative, and participatory ways that are epistemically inclusive of both lay and expert perspectives. To this end, she is interested in developing a more fundamental understanding of the early stages of the design process to improve design practice and pedagogy, and also improve the tools with which designers of complex systems work.

In her work, Dr. Verma focuses on three main research questions:

  1. How can a fundamental understanding of design be used to improve design practice, design tools, and engineering pedagogy? 
  2. How can design processes be made more open and participatory such that epistemic plurality and inclusivity are achieved as part of the design process?
  3. How can insights from design research be applied to the designs of policies and institutions for the governance — both innovation and regulation — of nuclear technologies?
Research areas:

Professional Service

Prior to her appointment at Harvard, Dr. Verma worked at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) in Paris where her work, endorsed and funded by policymakers from the NEA member countries, focused on bringing epistemologies from the humanities and social sciences to academic and practitioner nuclear engineering, thus broadening their epistemic core and helping nuclear engineers grapple with the ethical, moral, social, economic, and policy challenges created by the development and use of nuclear technologies. At the NEA, Verma also led the establishment of the Global Forum on Nuclear Education, Science, Technology and Policy. 

Verma has also previously worked at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Framatome (formerly Areva), and the Center for the Study of Science, Technology and Policy.

Honors and Awards

40 Under 40, American Nuclear Society, 2024

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellowship, Project on Managing the Atom and International Security Program, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2020

Outstanding Student Service Award, MIT Department of Nuclear and Engineering, Spring 2015

Alpha Nu Sigma, Nuclear Engineering Academic Honor Society, inducted Spring 2011

Kelly-Douglas Fellowship, MIT School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences— 2011 

Kelly-Douglas Fellowship, MIT School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences— 2010 

Burchard Scholar, MIT School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences —2010 – 2011