About — Priya Sakthi

I'm Priya Sakthi — a mechanical engineer turned researcher and AI specialist, currently based in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

My work sits at the intersection of renewable energy systems and AI. On the engineering side, I research and model hydrogen production, hybrid microgrids, and geothermal-based alternatives to diesel generation for remote Canadian communities. On the AI side, I work daily with frontier coding agents — reviewing AI-generated code, designing training tasks and grading rubrics, and building agentic workflows for engineering and research tasks.

I came to engineering through a love of how things work — pulling apart problems and putting them back together with better answers. That's still what I do, just with a wider toolbox now: HOMER and PLEXOS for energy modeling, ANSYS for fluid dynamics, SolidWorks for design, and Python, Rust, and a stack of agentic tools for the AI side.

Outside of paid work, I write about both worlds on this site and stay actively involved in research — I have three peer-reviewed papers on hydrogen energy systems in Canada, with more in the pipeline.

— Where I studied —

Education

2022 – 2023

Master of Applied Science · Mechanical Engineering

Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Specialization in energy systems and computational fluid dynamics. Thesis on turbulent flow modeling around tidal turbine foundations using ANSYS.

2014 – 2018

Bachelor of Engineering · Mechanical Engineering

India

Foundation in mechanical design, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and manufacturing — followed by industry roles in CAD design and food-industry equipment engineering.

— What excites me —

Interests

Renewable energy & the energy transition

Designing real systems that move communities off diesel and toward sustainable, locally appropriate power — especially in remote Canadian settings.

Agentic AI & coding tools

Using AI tools the way I'd use any other instrument in the lab — to do real work, save real time, and surface things I'd otherwise miss.

Hydrogen economy & supply chains

Modeling how green hydrogen produced from Canadian renewables can be transported, stored, and used domestically and as an export.

Technical writing & research

Translating complex engineering and AI work into clear, useful writing — papers, reports, grant proposals, and explainer articles.

Indigenous & remote community energy

Working on projects with real social impact — like microgrid design for Nain, Hopedale, and Natuashish in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Teaching & mentoring

I genuinely enjoy explaining difficult engineering ideas to people newer to the field. It's how I learned, and it's the part of research I love most.

I'm also a certified vocational rehabilitation professional — a separate credential I hold from earlier work. It's not currently a service I offer here, but it informs how I think about meaningful, accessible work and the human side of any project I take on.