An Ace on the Court and in the Classroom

Engineering major Alisha Chulani ’25 has been making her mark at Harvey Mudd College. North Hall mentor, Lab for Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics (LAIR) student researcher, two-time NCAA National tennis champion and Astronaut Scholar are just a few titles Chulani has earned during her time as a Mudder.

“I enjoy all the different things I’m doing,” Chulani says when asked how she does it all. “I really love my engineering major, and tennis has been something that’s always been a part of my life. So, it feels a little bit less like work and more like activities to have fun with.”

Despite her current success, when Chulani started her first year at Harvey Mudd, she had to work through a lot of self-doubt. “When you come in as a first year it’s really easy to doubt yourself and to think that you’re not going to be able to do this or you don’t fit in,” Chulani says.

But, by confiding in professors, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Athletics coaches, teammates and classmates, Chulani formed a support system that guaranteed a steady supply of encouragement and helped her take on schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

“That support has been super special for me,” Chulani says. “From the engineering program at Mudd to the athletics at CMS, as I did more, I got to the point where I realized if the people around me think I can do it, and I’m seeing other people do it, then I can do it, too.”

Chulani has been able to embrace her love for academics, something she feels is common among Mudd students. During the summer of 2023, she joined the LAIR team led by Chris Clark, emeritus professor of engineering, to conduct research in Costa Rica. Along with peers from the Shark Lab at California State University, Long Beach, and graduate students from the University of Costa Rica, the LAIR group worked on a seafloor mapping project in the Santa Elena Bay. Chulani and her team were responsible for programming the IVER-3 autonomous underwater vehicle routes and processing the sonar data it collected.

“It was a super memorable experience,” Chulani says. “Prof. Clark has been super cool to work with. I think being able to do this project with him and seeing the way he thinks about robotics and engineering in general has been really great.”

Equal to Chulani’s love for academics is her love for tennis. Along with being a two-time NCAA National Champion, Chulani earned a 2024 Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Championship, is a five-time All-America honoree, three-time ITA Student Athlete awardee, two-time Harvey Mudd College Female Athlete of the Year awardee and was featured in “The Sixth Street Rivalry,” an episode from LG Presents.

“One of the questions my coach always asks is why we play tennis, and I think for me, it’s the time of day that I can put my phone and all my work away and just focus on being on the court with my team,” Chulani says.

Playing tennis also has taught Chulani how to work with lab partners. “You get to learn how to work with different types of people, and the teamwork aspect of the engineering program has definitely been one of my favorite things,” she says. “It lets me work with friends, which doesn’t make it feel like work.”

Chulani credits the feeling of community she has at Mudd for helping her gain so many accolades. She mentioned the advice engineering professor Josh Brake provided when it came to managing tennis and engineering classes, promising to never lower his standards but to help her and be supportive. Chulani also shared how the hands-on experience in her Introduction to Engineering Systems class with James Howard Kindelberger Professor of Engineering and Department of Engineering Chair Nancy Lape inspired her to declare engineering as her major.

After graduating in spring, Chulani will go to work at Nvidia, where, as an intern in summer 2024, she conducted tests on the automation framework of graphic processing units. Chulani’s advice for other students at Harvey Mudd is to be open to the experience.

“It’s something that I try to remind myself every day because if I didn’t stay open to the experience, I wouldn’t have found my love for engineering,” Chulani says. “Even some of my favorite HSA classes—ones I never thought I would take—have been recommendations from my teammates and ended up being super interesting to me. So be open and try different things because it’s easy to doubt yourself, but you’re not going to be able to get better at anything if you don’t try it first.”