Hrihaan Bhutani

I'm a junior at Emerald High School in Dublin, California, and I graduate in June 2027. I build software and do my own research around technology, data, and public policy. Most of my time outside of school goes into building tools that solve real problems, whether that's for students at my school, for researchers, or for communities trying to deal with complicated systems.

I'm also really interested in how technology can either cause policy problems or hide them, and in building the tools that make those problems easier to see. My research on AI data center water stress started when I noticed that the industry's standard reporting metrics seemed built to hide where water is actually scarce, instead of showing it.

Long term, I'm interested in places where technology and policy run into each other: environmental disclosure, AI governance, and the way the things we choose to measure end up deciding what actually gets fixed. I want to build software that makes these problems concrete enough to act on, and do research that feeds into real decisions by regulators and institutions.

Short term, I'm focused on launching Emerald Echo at EHS before the next registration cycle, finishing the Hidden Currents paper for conference submission, and getting a deeper understanding of machine learning through the CNN/Alzheimer's research project.