Maya Gambhir’s (E ’26) Wednesdays begin with voice lessons in a quiet room at Gutmann College House. By the afternoon, she’s deep in mathematical theory, preparing to present her thesis to professors whose work in shaping the future of algorithms. By night, it’s time for rehearsal—she runs harmonies with a professional music director and leads one of Penn’s most unconventional a cappella groups.
The day’s packed schedule is emblematic of her life at Penn. Wednesdays, she explains, are her longest and busiest days, shifting between academics and extracurriculars, analysis and performance, math and music. That duality has come to define her.
For Maya, there has never been much of a reason to see these two parts of herself as contradictory. They are both real, both necessary, and both deeply hers. “I have thought about how those two pieces make up me as a person and how I need both in order to be happy,” she says. “But I don’t think I feel out of place because of that in any way.”
That balance didn’t emerge all at once. For her, math arrived first, and more reluctantly.
Math was something she was pushed toward as a child—for a long time, that push made it feel more like an obligation than a passion. “I didn’t really start liking math until high school,” she says, recalling a teacher who finally changed her perspective. “I had this amazing math teacher, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait, this is actually kind of fun and not just the thing that my mom makes me do every time I have a free summer.’”
From there, math became the place where she felt most at home. Even now, she describes herself as “the math girl.” It’s a label that’s followed her through high school and into college, where she found herself surrounded by people who knew her most immediately through coursework, research, and teaching.
At Penn, that side of her grew more ambitious. She has worked as a research assistant, been a teaching assistant for multiple computer science courses, and is currently finishing her thesis examining sortition algorithms. What draws her most to research isn’t just the theory, but the possibility of using it to shape the world around her. In the fall, she’ll be starting a Ph.D. program at Princeton University, looking at ways to make algorithmic decision–making systems more fair. “What I really am interested in is bridging the gap between the policies that people are writing [and] consequential decision–making algorithms, like loan applications or resume reviews or things like that,” she says.
That gap matters because, in her view, the people making policy often don’t understand the technical realities of the systems they hope to regulate. “I’m really interested in … doing computer science that is informed by policy and then informing policymakers themselves,” she says. Maya doesn’t believe that socially responsible algorithms construct themselves. “It’s something that you have to be very proactive about,” she says.
That attention to structure, fairness, and clarity shapes the way she moves throughout the rest of her life. If math is where she learned discipline, music becomes the place where she learned to loosen up.
Maya didn’t come into college as a seasoned performer. In fact, she began as an athlete. “Until COVID hit, I was a squash player,” she says. But in her senior year of high school, she auditioned for her school’s spring musical and found something she hadn’t expected—joy. “I just had so much fun,” she says. “I love that this is a collaborative effort, [because] I’m not actually a competitive person.”
That experience changed the kind of college student she wanted to be. She arrived at Penn determined to keep performing, but her path to do so wasn’t immediately clear. After auditioning for multiple a cappella groups and not being accepted, she ended up in Penn Six, a group that would become central to her Penn experience.
One of the defining features of the group, she says, is its no–audition model. Maya ran for president and took on the role her sophomore year, becoming deeply invested in how the group could become a community. “How do we balance the fact that we’re no–audition and we’re not trying to make anyone’s life super hard with the fact that we are working very hard to put on a high–quality show, even if we don’t have a barrier to entry like some other groups do?” she asks.
The job was part creative, part logistics, and part culture–building. “I enjoy doing broader leadership and goal setting,” she says. “But I also like managing logistical stuff and making plans and making schedules.”
Maya had to handle everything from figuring out rehearsal schedules to deciding on set lists to keeping track of forms, ticket sales, and event planning. “There was a lot of big–picture planning,” she says. “And then there’s also the entire day–to–day stuff.”
What she valued the most was the group’s openness to new voices. “When I joined, it was much less a friend group than it is now,” she says. Now, she believes the social side is a major strength. More importantly, Penn Six made room for people with wildly different backgrounds to contribute something meaningful. “If you have an idea, it matters,” she says. “Even if it’s your first semester.”
That philosophy shapes the way she considers performance as a whole. Penn Six isn’t just about singing well—it’s about creating a space where experimentation is welcome and the audience feels like it’s part of the energy. She remembers one performance in particular, when the group mentioned the Philadelphia Eagles in a comedy skit and the crowd responded by singing the entire fight song.
“I thought that was really great,” she says. “I love when the audience gets interactive.” For her, that response meant the group had built the right kind of atmosphere. “I feel like we’ve created a show environment that makes people feel like, ‘Oh, this is a fun time,’” she says.
Maya’s two worlds have each changed her in ways the other could not. Music, she says, has made her more comfortable with being bad at something. “I think it’s given me a level of comfort with being bad at things,” she says. That lesson carried over into her research, where she had to learn how to ask questions, challenge ideas, and speak confidently in rooms full of people who knew more than she did.
“It also helped me get over my fear of talking to a professor who’s really smart and already knows the answer,” she says. “You can still be very respectful of a person who has a lot of experience, like a professor, whilst still not quieting yourself.”
The reverse is true, too. Her analytical side shapes the way she approaches music, even when she sometimes has to fight against it. Her voice teacher, she says, can tell when she is overthinking. “She’s like, ‘Girl, you got to get off book so you can just feel it!’” Maya recalls with a laugh.
Both of her passions have helped her understand herself more clearly. Earlier in college, she says, she spent too much time comparing her path to those of others. That started to change when she met students with entirely different definitions of success. “There are so many ways to be happy,” she says. “I think that was something that I really hadn't internalized coming into college.”
Now, as graduation approaches and Princeton becomes the next chapter in her life, she is less interested in choosing between identities than in continuing to expand them both. She wants to keep singing—maybe join a jazz combo, maybe start a band, maybe even learn piano. “I can’t imagine my life without music,” she says. At the same time, she is stepping into her Ph.D. program with a new sense of purpose, working at the intersection of computer science and policy. The goal isn’t to resolve the differences between her two worlds, but to keep living in both. “These are the two things that I love,” she says. “I can’t have one without the other.”
