Shreyaa Raghavan’s journey into fixing among the world’s hardest challenges began with a easy love for puzzles. By highschool, her knack for problem-solving naturally drew her to pc science. Via her participation in an entrepreneurship and management program, she constructed apps and twice made it to the semifinals of this system’s international competitors.
Her early successes made a pc science profession appear to be an apparent alternative, however Raghavan says a major competing curiosity left her torn.
“Pc science sparks that puzzle-, problem-solving a part of my mind,” says Raghavan ’24, an Accenture Fellow and a PhD candidate in MIT’s Institute for Information, Methods, and Society. “However whereas I at all times felt like constructing cellular apps was a enjoyable little interest, it didn’t really feel like I used to be instantly fixing societal challenges.”
Her perspective shifted when, as an MIT undergraduate, Raghavan participated in an Undergraduate Analysis Alternative within the Photovoltaic Analysis Laboratory, now often called the Accelerated Supplies Laboratory for Sustainability. There, she found how computational strategies like machine studying might optimize supplies for photo voltaic panels — a direct software of her abilities towards mitigating local weather change.
“This lab had a really numerous group of individuals, some from a pc science background, some from a chemistry background, some who had been hardcore engineers. All of them had been speaking successfully and dealing towards one unified objective — constructing higher renewable power techniques,” Raghavan says. “It opened my eyes to the truth that I might use very technical instruments that I take pleasure in constructing and discover success in that by serving to resolve main local weather challenges.”
Along with her sights set on making use of machine studying and optimization to power and local weather, Raghavan joined Cathy Wu’s lab when she began her PhD in 2023. The lab focuses on constructing extra sustainable transportation techniques, a discipline that resonated with Raghavan attributable to its common affect and its outsized position in local weather change — transportation accounts for roughly 30 % of greenhouse gasoline emissions.
“If we had been to throw the entire clever techniques we’re exploring into the transportation networks, by how a lot might we cut back emissions?” she asks, summarizing a core query of her analysis.
Wu, an affiliate professor within the Division of Civil and Environmental Engineering, stresses the worth of Raghavan’s work.
“Transportation is a vital component of each the financial system and local weather change, so potential adjustments to transportation should be fastidiously studied,” Wu says. “Shreyaa’s analysis into good congestion administration is necessary as a result of it takes a data-driven strategy so as to add rigor to the broader analysis supporting sustainability.”
Raghavan’s contributions have been acknowledged with the Accenture Fellowship, a cornerstone of the MIT-Accenture Convergence Initiative for Business and Know-how.
As an Accenture Fellow, she is exploring the potential affect of applied sciences for avoiding stop-and-go visitors and its emissions, utilizing techniques reminiscent of networked autonomous automobiles and digital pace limits that fluctuate in keeping with visitors situations — options that would advance decarbonization within the transportation part at comparatively low value and within the close to time period.
Raghavan says she appreciates the Accenture Fellowship not just for the assist it supplies, but in addition as a result of it demonstrates trade involvement in sustainable transportation options.
“It’s necessary for the sector of transportation, and in addition power and local weather as a complete, to synergize with the entire totally different stakeholders,” she says. “I believe it’s necessary for trade to be concerned on this challenge of incorporating smarter transportation techniques to decarbonize transportation.”
Raghavan has additionally acquired a fellowship supporting her analysis from the U.S. Division of Transportation.
“I believe it’s actually thrilling that there’s curiosity from the coverage aspect with the Division of Transportation and from the trade aspect with Accenture,” she says.
Raghavan believes that addressing local weather change requires collaboration throughout disciplines. “I believe with local weather change, nobody trade or discipline goes to resolve it by itself. It’s actually obtained to be every discipline stepping up and attempting to make a distinction,” she says. “I don’t suppose there’s any silver-bullet resolution to this downside. It’s going to take many alternative options from totally different folks, totally different angles, totally different disciplines.”
With that in thoughts, Raghavan has been very energetic within the MIT Power and Local weather Membership since becoming a member of about three years in the past, which, she says, “was a extremely cool technique to meet tons of people that had been working towards the identical objective, the identical local weather targets, the identical passions, however from fully totally different angles.”
This yr, Raghavan is on the group and schooling group, which works to construct the group at MIT that’s engaged on local weather and power points. As a part of that work, Raghavan is launching a mentorship program for undergraduates, pairing them with graduate college students who assist the undergrads develop concepts about how they’ll work on local weather utilizing their distinctive experience.
“I didn’t foresee myself utilizing my pc science abilities in power and local weather,” Raghavan says, “so I actually wish to give different college students a transparent pathway, or a transparent sense of how they’ll become involved.”
Raghavan has embraced her space of examine even by way of the place she likes to suppose.
“I really like engaged on trains, on buses, on airplanes,” she says. “It’s actually enjoyable to be in transit and dealing on transportation issues.”
Anticipating a visit to New York to go to a cousin, she holds no dread for the lengthy practice journey.
“I do know I’m going to do a few of my greatest work throughout these hours,” she says. “4 hours there. 4 hours again.”
