Outreach

Here’s some of the most recent stuff I’ve been working on. Feel free to reach out if you’d like to talk about any of this!

Science Outreach

I am heavily invested in pushing for evidence-based decisions in policy-making and having conversations with the general public about why science matters. It is also important to me to encourage a sense of belonging in science and to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Policy

Through the Science Policy Group at Berkeley (SPG), I helped start and currently lead STEMVotes, an effort to improve voter turnout by students in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Through our social media campaign (#stemvotes), we have provided advocacy resources for fellow students and reminded them of upcoming voter deadlines. In 2018, we hosted a voter information night with almost a hundred attendees and crashed (many) departmental happy hours to register students to vote.

I’ve also been a project manager for SPG’s Science Meets Science series where we brought together speakers from both the social sciences and STEM to discuss timely science policy issues. Topics included racial and gender bias in artificial intelligence, wildfire response in California, and genetically modified crops. After these discussions, we also held roundtables to encourage students to write white papers on these issues with policy solutions. Here’s an example paper I helped write on regulating facial recognition systems.

Communication

As a team leader within Bay Area Scientists in Schools, I designed and taught hands-on lessons on the water cycle to dozens of elementary school students. In the past, I’ve shared my own research and fieldwork anecdotes at events such as the California Academy of Sciences NightLife and Grounds for Science!

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

I have worked on improving DEI in STEM at different levels, including mentoring undergraduates through Bay Area Graduate Pathways to STEM, incorporating trauma-informed pedagogy into my teaching, and advocating for departmental change through Civil/Environmental Engineers for Anti-Racism. I try to stay on top of best practices for DEI through extracurricular reading and seeking out opportunities like the Graduate Remote Instruction Innovation Fellows Program, which helped me ensure that equity and inclusion were integrated into the class I helped teach when courses were entirely online.

If you’re interested in learning more about DEI in STEM, I recommend reading through #ShutDownStem’s list of resources and the Equity in Graduate Education website. If you’re a Berkeley student, Professor Armando Fox has a great list of diversity-enhancing organizations on his website that I’ve used as a resource.

Community Outreach

As a counselor at the Crisis Support Services of Alameda County, I listen to and empathize with callers in distress, assess them for risk of suicide, collaborate with callers to de-escalate high-risk situations, and bridge connections to long-term care. I was drawn to this work because of a personal interest in promoting mental wellness, preventing suicide, and de-stigmatizing mental illness. This work opened my eyes to the extremes of suffering and compassion and has been both immensely challenging and rewarding. It’s helped me develop my active listening skills and mindfulness, which are two abilities I depend on every day.

Donation

Effective altruism is a social and philosophical movement that asks how we can use our talent, time, and money to most benefit others. This mindset of thinking critically about what it means to “do good” has inspired me donate a portion of my income to highly impactful charities each year. It’s simply one of the most efficient ways for me to have a net positive impact with the resources I have. In fact, one of my proudest accomplishments is running a marathon to raise $3,600 for the Against Malaria Foundation, a nonprofit that distributes insecticide-treated bed nets to people in need. I try to be transparent about my charitable contributions to encourage others to donate as well. Previously, I was a member of the Effective Altruists of Berkeley, which educated students on promising giving opportunities and hosted lectures by ethicists and nonprofit leaders.