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 laptop science. By 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 laptop science profession appear to be an apparent alternative, however Raghavan says a big 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 Knowledge, Techniques, and Society. “However whereas I all the time felt like constructing cellular apps was a enjoyable little pastime, it didn’t really feel like I used to be immediately 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 known 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 utility 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 methods,” 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 clear up 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 methods, a subject that resonated with Raghavan attributable to its common influence 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 the entire clever methods 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 crucial aspect of each the economic system and local weather change, so potential adjustments to transportation should be rigorously studied,” Wu says. “Shreyaa’s analysis into sensible 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 influence of applied sciences for avoiding stop-and-go site visitors and its emissions, utilizing methods akin to networked autonomous automobiles and digital pace limits that change in response to 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 help it offers, 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 completely different stakeholders,” she says. “I believe it’s essential for business to be concerned on this concern of incorporating smarter transportation methods 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 business aspect with Accenture,” she says.
Raghavan believes that addressing local weather change requires collaboration throughout disciplines. “I believe with local weather change, nobody business or subject goes to resolve it by itself. It’s actually bought to be every subject stepping up and attempting to make a distinction,” she says. “I don’t assume there’s any silver-bullet answer to this downside. It’s going to take many alternative options from completely different folks, 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 strategy to meet heaps of people that have been working towards the identical objective, the identical local weather objectives, the identical passions, however from utterly completely different angles.”
This yr, Raghavan is on the neighborhood and schooling 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 will 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 will get entangled.”
Raghavan has embraced her space of research even when it comes to the place she likes to assume.
“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.”
