Shreyaa Raghavan’s journey into fixing a number of 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. By means of 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, Programs, and Society. “However whereas I all the time felt like constructing cell apps was a enjoyable little interest, it didn’t really feel like I used to be straight 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 methods like machine studying might optimize supplies for photo voltaic panels — a direct software of her expertise towards mitigating local weather change.
“This lab had a really various 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 aim — 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 achievement in that by serving to remedy main local weather challenges.”
Together 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 resulting from its common affect and its outsized position in local weather change — transportation accounts for roughly 30 p.c of greenhouse gasoline emissions.
“If we have been to throw all the 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 component of each the financial system and local weather change, so potential adjustments to transportation have to 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 Trade and Expertise.
As an Accenture Fellow, she is exploring the potential affect of applied sciences for avoiding stop-and-go visitors and its emissions, utilizing techniques akin to networked autonomous autos and digital pace limits that change in accordance with visitors circumstances — 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 help it gives, but in addition as a result of it demonstrates trade involvement in sustainable transportation options.
“It’s essential for the sphere of transportation, and likewise power and local weather as an entire, to synergize with all the completely different stakeholders,” she says. “I believe it’s essential for trade to be concerned on this challenge of incorporating smarter transportation techniques to decarbonize transportation.”
Raghavan has additionally obtained 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 trade facet 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 unravel it by itself. It’s actually received to be every discipline stepping up and attempting 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 completely different individuals, completely different angles, completely 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 very cool option to meet tons of people that have been working towards the identical aim, the identical local weather targets, the identical passions, however from utterly completely different angles.”
This 12 months, Raghavan is on the neighborhood and schooling staff, which works to construct the neighborhood 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 will work on local weather utilizing their distinctive experience.
“I didn’t foresee myself utilizing my pc science expertise in power and local weather,” Raghavan says, “so I actually need to give different college students a transparent pathway, or a transparent sense of how they will 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 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.”
