Rakshata Chawla heads up research and development for the Black Knights, specializing in medical cybernetics. She's best known for designing the Guren Mk-II and its radiant wave surger, as well as developing the Gefjun Disturber—a force field generator that shuts down any sakuradite-powered tech in its radius, including Knightmares. The tech does have limits; newer models have built-in countermeasures, so only fifth-gen Knightmares and older stay vulnerable. The field also blocks hadrons, radio waves, and microwaves, which conveniently makes anything inside invisible to radar while helping hadron-based beam weapons function better.
She studied at the Imperial Colchester Institute and apparently knew Lloyd Asplund and Cécile Croomy back in school, though she's not one to dwell on the past. Day-to-day, Rakshata's pretty easygoing—you'll usually find her lounging on a couch when she's not actively working (the Black Knights' flagship Ikaruga even has one installed on the bridge). She's rarely without her tobacco pipe. She treats her tech like her own kids and gets genuinely attached to them, which is why she got visibly furious when Lloyd and Cécile tinkered with one of her Knightmares without asking. They at least had the decency to credit her design.
When the UFN was formed and the Black Knights reorganized under it as a military force, Rakshata took on the role of Chief of Science—essentially the same gig she'd always had, just with a fancier title.
Content compiled by AnimeList.moe from publicly available sources.
