2
Questions and Answers
Q1: Can you please give us a background about your studies and career at
Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute Technology?
A1: After obtaining a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences (physics)
from Trinity College, University of Cambridge in 2009, I pursued a PhD in
Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) under the supervision of Professor Vladimir Bulović. Matriculating as
an MIT Energy Initiative Fellow, my studies centered on the materials
science, electrical engineering, physics and economics of energy
technologies. My research focused on addressing climate change by
engineering next-generation light-emitting devices (LEDs) and solar cells
using nanomaterials called quantum-dots. Among our findings, my
colleagues and I discovered the origin of efficiency loss at high-voltages
typical in quantum-dot LEDs (QD-LEDs), an essential finding in the
development of high-efficiency, high-brightness lighting technologies. We
also invented and patented the most efficient thin-film shortwave-infrared
light source in the world. My review of QD-LEDs in the journal Nature
Photonics is the most highly cited in its field (1,100 citations).
During my PhD, I also earned the MIT Graduate Certificate in Science,
Technology and Policy. I studied science and environmental policy, with a
focus on climate change and energy. Under the supervision of Professor
Jessika Trancik, my research assessed the costs and carbon intensities of the
125 most popular light-duty vehicle models in America. Our study and
accompanying online app for car buyers showed that low-carbon-emitting
vehicles are also amongst the cheapest, and that by 2050, only electric
vehicles fueled by carbon-free electric power will meet climate targets.
As a graduate student, I co-led a four-year fossil fuel divestment campaign at
MIT, precipitating the Institute’s first climate action plan. Accordingly, I
was appointed by MIT’s administration to represent MIT’s 6,800 graduate
students on the Institute’s climate change committee, and our student group
was awarded the MIT Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award. In 2011, I
was one of two graduate students (out of 6,510) nominated by then-MIT
President Susan Hockfield for the Academy of Achievement’s International
Achievement Summit. In 2014, I served as a youth delegate at the U.N.
COP20 climate negotiations in Lima, Peru. In 2016, I helped organize the
first major scientist protests against the Trump administration’s science and
climate policies. Also in 2016, I co-led a campaign of 300 geoscientists
urging the world’s largest Earth science organization to cut ties with
ExxonMobil, co-authoring the most up-to-date account of the company’s
past and present climate science misinformation [1].
After finishing my PhD, I became a Post Doctoral Fellow with Professor
Naomi Oreskes in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard
University and with Professor Jessika Trancik at the Institute for Data,
Systems and Society at MIT. In 2017, Oreskes and I published the first ever
peer-reviewed, academic analysis of ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of