I never had to worry about air pollution in my hometown but in Los Angeles, I’ve learned how important air quality is. As a Research Fellow with USC’s CURVE program, I joined a project that combined chemical engineering, environmental justice, and machine learning. I work with the ACE (Air Climate Equity) Group in Viterbi’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department. We were studying air pollutant exposure across Southern California, using open-source data from low-cost sensors and EPA monitors.
It started with Python scripts, but quickly turned into an investigation of how inequality and infrastructure shape the air we breathe. Working with Python was daunting at first but my PI and research mentors were super helpful and supportive. I was stitching together datasets with different formats, cleaning thousands of lines of noisy data, and applying co-kriging models to fill in spatial gaps. Sometimes, I spent more time debugging my code than I spent actually coding. It was messy but incredibly rewarding.
In high school, “research” felt like filling out lab reports. I never did hands-on research but I was always assigned research papers in my classes. This was different. I had to write literature reviews when I first started to familiarize myself with previous research. However, I was also coding, debugging, and presenting important findings. I saw firsthand how engineers can drive impact, and it completely reframed what I thought research could be.
Since starting research, I’ve learned how intensive research is. It’s all about filling in the knowledge gaps of previous research to propel that field forward. I’ve had so much fun working with my group. My advisors are helpful, supportive, and patient, which has been so important for my learning and growth as a young researcher.
I received a stipend for my research and wasn’t graded on my work, which luckily meant that most of my stress only came from long hours debugging. I’m looking forward to continuing my research and exploring other fields of research as I continue to meet other research fellows and professors.
