Today, MIT Technology Review unveiled its annual list of 35 innovators under 35, highlighting the remarkable talents shaping our future. Among this year's honorees is Shivani Torres, my cofounder, and Petra’s Chief Product Officer at Petra. I couldn’t be more proud and honored to build this company with Shivani. Because of her, Petra is transforming the way we underground utilities. Together, we're achieving our goal of making communities resilient by lowering the cost of undergrounding.
About the Award
The MIT 35 Under 35 Award spotlights exceptional young professionals making transformative contributions to technology. Candidates are evaluated on their innovations, entrepreneurial achievements, and impact on areas such as biotechnology, AI, energy, and beyond. Winners come from diverse backgrounds, including academia, corporations, startups, and social activism, embodying the promise of technology to shape a better world.
Shivani’s History of Innovation and Leadership at Petra
Shivani’s journey in the trenchless industry began in 2018 when she first invested in Petra (then Arcbyt) through Lemnos VC. As our Vice President of Engineering, she oversaw the development of our first prototype of our non-contact trenchless robot using plasma. Shivani's leadership qualities and depth of understanding immediately changed how I ran Petra. Shivani dives head first into solving problems, reads everything on a topic she can find (no matter what time of night), interviews as many people as she can, and really gets at the heart of problems. She asks the right questions and approaches everything she develops or concepts from first principles. She quickly became my partner in all decisions at Petra. I could think of no other person I wanted to build this company with, so in 2020, I named her both a board member and co-founder.
In 2021, Shivani transitioned to become Petra's Chief Product Officer. From her extensive research, Shivani conceived of the idea which ultimately led to Petra’s Jet Bore, and suggested this innovative solution to Ian Wright, Petra's CTO at the time. Shivani correctly identified that a combustion-based solution like a turbine could more efficiently thermally excavate rock without the massive drawbacks that Plasma caused.
Shivani was instrumental in evolving Petra’s hard rock cutterhead technology from one that was plasma-based to jet-based. After two years of R&D on a hard rock cutterhead using DC thermal plasma, it became apparent that plasma was economically and commercially inviable due to a number of fundamental issues with the core plasma technology. Determined to find a new path, Shivani was reading through past thermal spallation, spallation drilling research, and advanced drilling techniques from notable experts in the field and organizations like Los Alamos National Labs, Browning, Maurer, Kant, et. al, when she realized that jet drilling was another method proven to drive the process of thermal spallation. Thermal spallation is a process where materials fracture or break apart due to rapid and uneven heating, typically occurring when a material undergoes extreme temperature fluctuations, causing it to crack or flake. While the plasma boring technology had demonstrated show-stopping blockers to its commercial viability, the fundamental physics of using heat and mass flow to drive thermal spallation were sound. Previous teams from research institutes in the 1970s had demonstrated that oxyfuel torches had been effective in breaking ground.
Over the next few years, the engineering team, now led by Roberto Zillante, furthered this work to develop a cutterhead that uses a jet engine and an afterburner to drive software-defined jet boring. After the pivot to jet drilling, the engineering team was able to demonstrate that using biodiesel with tunable (software-defined) temperature and mass flow could efficiently excavate hard, abrasive rock. And it was economically viable - we are now excavating rock at 90% cheaper unit costs than competitive methods at a rate of 5-ft per hour through the hardest rocks on earth like Granite and Sioux Quartzite.
Today, this cutterhead has been integrated into Petra’s first commercially available product, The Petra Platform, which (again) we also wouldn’t have brought to market without Shivani. This is because in 2022, she helped close the deal to acquire Zilper, which had developed a method to bore through the ground conditions we couldn’t (like sand, cobblestones, boulders, high water table sand, mud, dense clays, etc). Zilper had developed their Assisted Dynamic Boring method which was a new technology for excavating small diameter tunnels in unstable ground conditions, which are often found in coastal installations. We had a rock solution, they had a coastal solution and we realized that the combination of our methods into one single trenchless platform would enable us to derisk trenchless jobs in the most vulnerable areas - wildfire prone mountainous regions and hurricane prone coastal regions. Shivani was the driving strategic force behind evaluating Zilper’s technology and convincing them to join our team. It was because of this merger that we were able to get to market faster with the Petra Platform.
In 2022, we started modularizing our non-contact method and made it a swappable component of the Petra platform - it’s now one of 7 modules in the Platform, which makes our construction teams capable of boring through any ground condition they encounter. An all geology multi-tool like this has never been developed before. The world is boring small diameter utility tunnels in geologies it’s never had to bore through in the past (including through hard rock for many hundreds of feet in distance). This innovation is derisking utility construction jobs because it eliminates the risk that the job gets halted due to encountering nightmare geologies that weren’t previously anticipated.
The Strategic Force Behind Petra
In 2021, Shivani transitioned from VP of Engineering to Chief Product Officer, reflecting her increasing role in steering the company's strategic direction. She’s been tasked with developing a technology roadmap that meets the needs of construction and utility customers and honors our mission to protect communities. Over these years, her work has resulted in an extensive patent portfolio with over 35 filings across 10 patent families, which addresses the multi-trillion dollar market for underground utility infrastructure.
This year, Shivani secured a high-profile PG&E undergrounding job, emphasizing the industry’s trust in Petra and the technology it has developed. Currently, the Petra Platform is oversubscribed and is on several, government-backed, critical infrastructure projects in Canada, United States, and Latin America.
A Multi-Faceted Talent
Beyond her technical achievements; Shivani is fueled by a passion for music and performance. As a DJ and electronic music producer, performing under the moniker SHIVANI, she recently had the opportunity to open for Shaq (DJ Diesel) at the Outside Lands after-party in San Francisco. She runs her own small-scale industrial arts business primarily focused on wood metal interactions, creates massive fire installations for Burning Man, and enjoys playing horse polo on the weekends. Beyond her creative pursuits, she's an active investor in companies and funds that align with her values and vision.
MIT Technology Review's inclusion of Shivani Torres in its prestigious list is a testament to her visionary leadership and extraordinary contributions to the world.
Let’s go, my friend!
About Petra
Petra's mission is to simplify the undergrounding of critical infrastructure by boring through all geologies. As the first company to develop an all-geology trenchless method, we aim to positively impact lives and communities. Petra is the first company capable of undergrounding critical utility infrastructure in all geologies from difficult hard rock to flowing sands. The innovative Petra Platform™ is the first hybrid-powered trenchless multi-tool on the market, and is a game-changer in the trenchless industry that saves time, reduces costs, and minimizes carbon footprint. Four years ago, Petra embarked on a mission to develop a trenchless tunneling technology capable of boring through the hardest and most abrasive rocks. Stay connected with us and follow our progress as we roll out this revolutionary technology across the United States, transforming the landscape of underground construction.
