Ari Peró

Ari Peró is an engineer, urbanist, and artist committed to building more just cities. Since February 2018, before they were even old enough to vote, they have been organizing for policy change as a founding member of Students Demand Action: Miami. Ari is guided by the principle of "pay it forward and pay it back," inspiring peers to harness their political agency and empowering them with tools for tangible transformation.

Their interests converge around critical issues such as civic technology / e-governance, housing justice, environmentally conscious planning through indigenous and reparative paradigms, and holistic criminal justice reform—fighting for both racial and LGBTQ+ justice within the context of reducing incarceration. Utilizing technology, programming, machine vision, and urban science principles, they strive to drive transformation in these domains.

Ari recently graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a B.S. in Urban Science & Planning with Computer Science and in Music, where they were both a scholar and Teaching Assistant in MIT's Climate and Sustainability Consortium (MCSC) Scholars Program. Through the program, they engaged deeply with projects addressing pressing climate and sustainability issues, while mentoring fellow scholars in research design as well as navigating academic and professional pathways related to climate impact.

Ari's research spans impactful projects that use technology to tackle environmental and urban challenges. As a researcher in the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) under Dr. Sara Beery, Ari explored the use of machine learning and visual AI to analyze and optimize animal species tracking across diverse ecosystems. By advancing computational approaches to preserve global biodiversity, Ari contributed to international conservation and equitable data sharing policies.

At MIT's Senseable City Lab, Ari employed machine learning and advanced image processing techniques to study urban greenery and tree health. Their work fused RGB, thermal, and near-infrared imagery to quantify the effects of urban forests on heat mitigation and climate resilience. Their work provides actionable insights to practitioners and policymakers in improving public health and integrating green infrastructure into planning.

In industry, Ari has focused on infrastructure powering large-scale systems. As a Software Engineering Intern on ML Serving & Inference Infrastructure at Pinterest, they built an automated cluster management framework that cut setup time from 4.5 hours to 15 minutes and extended feature optimization systems to process 95M+ operations with negligible added latency. At Amazon Project Kuiper, their first experience in embedded systems design, Ari designed a satellite gateway CLI that reduced codebase size and improved developer productivity, as well as developed Rust-based features to address security vulnerabilities in bootloader verification.

Beyond research and engineering, Ari grounded their MIT experience in community work: coordinating social justice programming for the Active Community Engagement pre-orientation program, teaching in the MITES Summer program, and serving as a PLEASURE Educator leading consent and healthy relationship workshops. As President of G@MIT, MIT's LGBTQ+ cultural and advocacy organization, they worked to secure space, resources, and institutional accountability for students with intersectional identities.

Ari's commitment to public service and advocacy has been recognized through awards including the Priscilla King Gray Public Service Award, the Albert G. Hill Prize, the Golden Beaver Award, and OME Distinguished Peer in Public Service recognition, as well as national honors such as the Point Foundation Flagship Scholarship, Miami Ortega Foundation Scholarship, and Hispanic Scholarship Fund (HSF) awards.

Ari has also been deeply involved in raising awareness of the countless injustices experienced by transgender individuals via their artistic pursuits. Their recent video installations and live performances explore the ongoing impact of their community's history on present-day dynamics (shared fears and behaviors).

Before MIT, Ari trained in classical and jazz voice at a magnet arts high school, a passion they continued channeling through the MIT Concert Choir, Chamber Chorus, Vocal Jazz Ensemble, FaMLE (Laptop Ensemble), Rambax Senegalese Drum Ensemble, and the Emerson/Harris Program in Jazz and Classical Voice. Their video installation and live performance work explores trans experience, NYC ballroom culture, and the legacy of the AIDS crisis as living, political memory. These pieces capture Ari's own emotions as a trans, Afro-Indigenous activist navigating complex systems of power and oppression, while shedding light on many of the less "palatable" and often overlooked challenges faced by black transgender women.

In 2025, Ari was selected as one of the world's top applicants for the prestigious Erasmus Mundus Joint Master (EMJM) in Redesigning the Post-Industrial City (MSc RePIC), with a full merit scholarship. They are now pursuing this interdisciplinary master's across six countries and ten universities in Europe and Turkey—deepening their training in global urban innovation, sustainable development, and participatory planning.