Nadya received her B.S. from Cal Poly San Luis Obipso in BioResource and Agricultural Engineering. She has 25 years of experience working in contracting, construction, and engineering, having worked as an irrigation engineer in California since 2008. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California Davis in Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

Nadya specializes in design of canal conveyance monitoring and controls. She has helped build over thirty water district SCADA systems, many from the ground up. She has also worked extensively in agricultural water measurement and modeling, including flume design, flow measurement, and evapotranspiration modeling.