Update to Our Classmates

July 2025

We are delighted to congratulate and introduce Sanay Tralshawala ’25 as the ninth winner of the Class of 1957 Spectrum Award. Sanay received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, summa cum laude, in three years and will be pursuing an M.S. in AI Engineering-Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University following a summer internship with Northrop Grumman.

While at RPI, Sanay spent a summer as a Legislative Intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC working for a congressman and learning about the intersection of STEM and public policy. He also worked as an intern and co-op at the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a Risk and Reliability Analyst where he contributed to risk assessments on nuclear reactors.

At RPI, his academic exposure went well beyond the classroom, including research work in the Energy Systems Lab and the Intelligent Systems, Automation and Control Lab. He also worked on a Department of Energy grant looking into Consent-Based Siting of Nuclear Waste in the local community.

Sanay is committed to helping others reach their full potential. He displayed leadership in the RPI community, serving as a Resident Assistant (RA) and a Learning Assistant (LA) helping fellow students transition from high school to college and providing support for his residents, while sharing his personal anecdotes for further guidance.

He was a leader in the New York Gamma Chapter of Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and served as the Corresponding Secretary and the first Professional Development Chair, where he defined expectations for this position.

He was an active member of student government, holding positions in the Rensselaer Union Executive Board the financial body overseeing a $4 million budget. He served as the Clubs and Organization Representative and the Marketing and Strategy Committee Chairperson, where he worked to restart this committee and give it a new identify since it had faded away during COVID.

Despite being an engineer, Sanay played an active role in organizing RPI’s annual Hackathon, or HackRPI, as the Director of Sponsorship. He played a pivotal role with the RPI Engineering Ambassadors, an educational outreach program designed to inspire the next generation of engineers. This included helping to lead the Chip Ambassadors initiative to engage the local community in semiconductor technology.

Sanay was an active member of the local community volunteering at many charitable organizations such as BAPS Charities. As Youth Coordinator with BAPS Albany, he became a leader and a mentor to many of his younger peers, planning and hosting events designed to teach moral values and prepare them with social and academic skills, such as a toy drive to promote the idea of giving back to the community. Each year, he helped raise money for the local Fuller Road Fire Department and previously for the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the Nature Conservancy.

About the Class of 1957 Spectrum Award

The Class of 1957 Spectrum Award was created in 2017 in honor of the Class of 1957’s 60^th Reunion. The Reunion Planning Committee wanted to plan a class gift which would be directly tied to their class and leave a lasting impact on Rensselaer.

To accomplish that objective, to re-emphasize the Class’s long-standing legacy of generosity, and to keep their strong commitment to Rensselaer and to community service, they created an endowed prize fund which will carry the class name in perpetuity: The “Class of 1957 Spectrum Award: Academics, Service, and Involvement.” This award is given annually to a junior or senior engineering student with an outstanding academic record who also exemplifies the heart and attitude of community service.

Thanks to the generous support from many of the members of the Class of 1957, we are nearing a donation total of $250,000, and the award has now been presented to eight outstanding students.

If you would like to support the Spectrum Award via check or other offline giving method, please contact the Office of Annual Giving via email or by phone at (518) 276-6055.