Hi, I am Shikha Soneji 👋
I build AI people can trust.
I am the Co-Founder & CEO of ConsenTerra, where we are building one compliance software for data center operators: AI agents grounded in regulatory ontologies that turn dense regulations into gap analyses, filings, and audit-ready reports, with every output cited back to the governing text.
I hold a PhD in Informatics from Penn State (defended Feb 2026), where my research in NLP and Explainable AI focused on helping people truly understand what they agree to. Before founding ConsenTerra, I built enterprise GenAI and LLM evaluation systems as a Data Scientist at ADP.
News
- 2026
-
🚀 Pitched ConsenTerra at FoundersBoost Demo Day
-
🎓 Defended my PhD dissertation at Penn State
-
🏢 Co-founded ConsenTerra
- 2025
-
🏅 Hackathon streak: 3rd Prize at DigitalOcean by MLH & Runner-up at Flowglad
-
🥇 1st Prize, Trae Hackathon
-
🥈 2nd Prize, Climate Week NYC Hackathon
-
🎤 Presented "Emissions Impossible: Five AI 'What If' Scenarios for Emission Reduction" at IEEE TEMSCON 2025
-
✍️ Reviewer, AAAI 2025 Conference
-
📖 Featured in IST Summer MagazineRead the article →
-
🏆 AI Award (AI Societal Impact) for “I Agree? Oops, You Just Signed Away Your Privacy!”
-
🎙️ Attended Rotary “Burn & Learn” biochar talk
-
🖼️ Poster: “Laugh Now, Cry Later: The ‘I Agree’ Button and Your Vanishing Privacy!”
-
🧑⚖️ Judge, SharkHack (Major League Hacking)
-
🧑⚖️ Judge, Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA)
-
👩🔬 Featured in Women in AI “Weekly Scientist Spotlight”
- 2024
-
🎓 Defended PhD proposal (Comprehensive Exam completed)
Writing
See all posts
AI First vs People First
Building real-world AI means balancing model power with human needs. A people-first approach reshapes AI by listening, adapting, and serving real users.
Your Data, Your Power!
Who owns your digital footprint? Imagine transparent, user-controlled data with innovation built on true digital ownership.
Privacy • Trust • XAI
Can XAI make privacy clearer? Key takeaways and lessons from trust, scrutiny, and transparency in real-world systems.
The Fine Print Decoder
hover or tap the legalese ↓My entire career in one toy. Below is the kind of text you agree to every single day. Touch any clause to see what it actually means.
TERMS OF SERVICE (LAST UPDATED: WHENEVER WE FELT LIKE IT)
Reading every policy you agree to in a year would take about 76 working days. Nobody does it. That is exactly why I do what I do, and why ConsenTerra exists.
Education
PhD in Informatics, Pennsylvania State University
Dissertation: “Everyone Deserves to Understand: An End-to-End Framework for Policy Analysis, Explanation, and User Understanding at the Point of Decision.”
Advisor: Dr. Jonathan Dodge · PlainText Lab
MS in Computer Science, Stevens Institute of Technology
Graduate research with the Systems Engineering Research Center (Helix project, DoD-sponsored).
BE in Computer Engineering, University of Mumbai
Final project: “ORUTA”, privacy-preserving cloud auditing.
Get in touch
The fastest way to reach me is email or LinkedIn, whether it is about ConsenTerra, research, or just to say hi.