Shreyaa Raghavan’s journey into fixing a few of the world’s hardest challenges began with a easy love for puzzles. By highschool, her knack for problem-solving naturally drew her to laptop science. Via her participation in an entrepreneurship and management program, she constructed apps and twice made it to the semifinals of this system’s world competitors.
Her early successes made a laptop science profession appear to be an apparent selection, however Raghavan says a big competing curiosity left her torn.
“Laptop 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 all the time felt like constructing cell apps was a enjoyable little passion, 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 referred to as 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 have been hardcore engineers. All of them have been speaking successfully and dealing towards one unified objective — constructing higher renewable vitality 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 remedy main local weather challenges.”
Together with her sights set on making use of machine studying and optimization to vitality 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 area that resonated with Raghavan on account of its common affect and its outsized position in local weather change — transportation accounts for roughly 30 p.c of greenhouse fuel emissions.
“If we have been to throw the entire clever techniques we’re exploring into the transportation networks, by how a lot might we scale 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 ingredient of each the economic system and local weather change, so potential modifications to transportation should be rigorously studied,” Wu says. “Shreyaa’s analysis into good congestion administration is essential as a result of it takes a data-driven method 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 Expertise.
As an Accenture Fellow, she is exploring the potential affect of applied sciences for avoiding stop-and-go site visitors and its emissions, utilizing techniques equivalent to networked autonomous autos and digital velocity limits that change in line with site visitors situations — options that might advance decarbonization within the transportation part at comparatively low price and within the close to time period.
Raghavan says she appreciates the Accenture Fellowship not just for the assist it gives, but additionally as a result of it demonstrates business involvement in sustainable transportation options.
“It’s essential for the sphere of transportation, and in addition vitality and local weather as a complete, to synergize with the entire totally different stakeholders,” she says. “I believe it’s essential for business to be concerned on this situation 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 facet with the Division of Transportation and from the business facet with Accenture,” she says.
Raghavan believes that addressing local weather change requires collaboration throughout disciplines. “I believe with local weather change, nobody business or area goes to resolve it by itself. It’s actually bought to be every area stepping up and making an attempt to make a distinction,” she says. “I don’t suppose there’s any silver-bullet answer 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 lively 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 approach to meet heaps of people that have been working towards the identical objective, the identical local weather objectives, the identical passions, however from fully totally different angles.”
This 12 months, Raghavan is on the neighborhood and training workforce, which works to construct the neighborhood at MIT that’s engaged on local weather and vitality 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 laptop science abilities in vitality and local weather,” Raghavan says, “so I actually need to give different college students a transparent pathway, or a transparent sense of how they’ll get entangled.”
Raghavan has embraced her space of research even by way of the place she likes to suppose.
“I 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 prepare journey.
“I do know I’m going to do a few of my finest work throughout these hours,” she says. “4 hours there. 4 hours again.”
