Nikhil Sensharma

Nikhil Sensharma is interested in the systems most people rarely think about: the soil beneath a building, the chemicals that must be monitored and the environmental safeguards that help communities grow responsibly.

For him, studying environmental engineering at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, was his first step reduce harm and improve daily life.

“Whether it’s fewer chemicals, a smaller footprint or limiting contamination, we like to look at reducing our impact in any way we can,” he says.

Sensharma says one of his “aha!” moments came in EVE 394 Global Environmental Perspectives when he and his classmates discussed current environmental issues and watched documentaries that showed how communities directly affected by environmental problems in deeply practical ways.

“I realized then, I was right where I wanted to be,” he says. 

As a Grand Challenges Scholar, Sensharma put that mindset into practice through an internship with Langan, an engineering and environmental remediation consulting company. There, he worked in the field collecting soil samples for geotechnical testing and contributed to computer-aided design drawings, compliance reports, remediation system design and software engineering-related projects.

“I’m always solving new problems, communicating with new people and working outside of my comfort zone on wildly different projects,” Sensharma says. “It’s been a thoroughly engaging internship experience.”

One of those projects gave him the chance to apply technology to a common challenge in environmental consulting. During his internship, he saw engineers reviewing chemical data and comparing readings against compliance standards, a process he says can be time-consuming and leave room for human error.

“With limited knowledge of coding or how Visual Studio works, I used artificial intelligence to write a Microsoft Excel macro package that reads through existing chemical exceedance databases and highlights those chemicals that are in exceedance based on compliance standards, greatly reducing time spent comparing values,” he says.

Following graduation this summer, Sensharma will work full-time for Langan. In the fall, he will begin his final year at ASU in the Accelerated Master’s program, his last step before serving as a staff-level engineer at the company.

“My hope is that everyone benefits from the work I do, and no one notices,” he says. “That is to say, my solutions are so commonplace, integrated and sustainable, you would never think they weren’t there in the first place.”

Favorites

Hobby: Making music (digi-folk + emo) 
Bands: Black Country, New Road
Movie: Speed Racer (2008)
Book: God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert
Game: League of Legends

Read about other exceptional graduates of the Fulton Schools’ spring 2026 class.

Written by Lisa Irish