“I strongly believe that the ������̳ and the Beeck Center are valuable environments to cultivate my diverse interests,” says Ras-Work. “I don’t know what the future holds, but I know I’m well-equipped to meet it after my time at the Beeck Center.”

Ethan Fan (C’24)

Major: Biology of Global Health and Economics

Hometown: Columbia, Maryland

What inspired you to apply to the Beeck Center?

I was inspired to apply to the Beeck Center because of its mission centered around social impact through technology. I believe the field of data has a lot of potential and can be used to help underserved communities. I am also interested in connecting technology to modernize policy work and research. 

What research are you working on while there?

I am a student analyst part of the State Chief Data Officers Network Project. For my role, I research different fundamental state open data sets, create assessment criteria for those data sets and analyze them based on those criteria. I will be researching these 11 foundational datasets highlighted in a previous Beeck publication, Open Data for Economic Recovery, for all fifty states and compiling an aggregated way to display the research I have done.

What career development skills do you hope to gain while there? How does the Beeck Center help you achieve your career goals?

I hope to learn more about what makes data so important, why governments are behind in modernizing their platforms and how I can apply data to any research I do on a daily basis. At the Beeck Center, I have learned how to access and find any level of state spatial map data or numerical datasets that are published for transparency purposes. I have also learned common skills used in Airtable and Tableau platforms. I have learned more about my interested career field of health care, its increasing costs and common issues underserved communities face regarding healthcare. 

How does this help you with your work for the Beeck Center?

The Beeck Center has been very helpful in helping guide me toward the right field of work and the impact I hope to create with my major. A part of the student analyst program involves career development and workshops. In these events, we are asked to research more about what interests us in social impact and for me it is health care. Some assignments have asked me to keep up with the news in the healthcare field, some of the major problems arising in the field and finding data that could help address those problems. I think the skills learned from these assignments will help me in any field related to my major, whether that be research, non-profit work, or healthcare insurance. 

Katie Hawkinson (C’23)

Major: History, minor in Global Medieval Studies

Hometown: Spokane, Washington

What inspired you to apply to the Beeck Center?

I applied to the Beeck Center because I am passionate about making innovative thinking accessible to the public. As a Storytelling and Editorial Content Analyst, I will get the chance to learn more about the amazing work Beeck Center researchers are doing to evoke social change while making their findings digestible and interesting for the world.

What research are you working on while there?

I have a slightly different role than other students, as I am focused on communications rather than research. That means I take the amazing research that my coworkers have done and boil it down into parts that we can present to the public. I write blog posts for our website, craft Twitter and LinkedIn posts and I am even helping with the layout and design of reports. My job is really special to me because I get to engage with all the work done here at the Beeck Center.

What career development skills do you hope to gain while there? How does the Beeck Center help you achieve your career goals?

While working on communications at the Beeck Center, I hope to learn how to be a human-centered, ethical storyteller. No matter where I end up after graduation, being a strong writer with experience in storytelling will serve me well.

How does your major help you with your work for the Beeck Center?

As a humanities major, the bulk of my coursework and assessments are writing-based. Specifically, as a historian, I find myself studying the stories of civilizations, institutions and communities, trying to make sense of how each component of society worked together to create the historical record. In a way, I’m doing something very similar here at the Beeck Center — I take these amazing, technical reports written by our phenomenal staff and try to piece together how each step of their project matters to the larger picture, as well as how we can help the general public understand the significance of this work. In both my role as a student and as an analyst, I have the opportunity to find the most important pieces of complex processes and convey them clearly to others in an effort to spread knowledge and understanding.

Zega Ras- Work (C’23)

Major: Political Economy, minor Environmental Studies

Hometown: Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

What inspired you to apply to the Beeck Center?

I often find that data and technology enthusiasts overlook the importance of public policy for achieving innovation, and public policy people underrate the importance of data and technology for achieving broader societal goals. The Beeck Center lies right at the intersection of these worlds. I applied to Beeck to get involved with the emerging field of public interest technology, and I now see that the potential for innovation to address public needs including disease, food systems, poverty and inequality, and more is limitless.

What research are you working on while there?

At the Beeck Center, I work on the Data Labs project, which focuses on helping state governments leverage data for economic recovery from the pandemic. On that project I do qualitative research, identifying and sharing best practices on how states have already addressed key policy issues through data-informed decision-making. I am also starting to do quantitative work on our Chief Data Officers Network, normalizing program data and presenting it through forms of visualization. As a technical assistant, I also do smaller, issue-specific research assignments to support our program managers.

What career development skills do you hope to gain while there? How does the Beeck Center help you achieve your career goals?

I’m gaining some hard skills that involve working with data, as well as hopefully soon getting experience with some legal aspects of our work including contract-making, data sharing, and inter-organizational collaboration. I hope to also build on my teamwork skills as well as grow as a leader and communicator. The Center offers student analysts abundant mentorship opportunities with our supervisors and the Fellows, in addition to regular career development workshops that nurture skill building. I am also creating a valuable network here.

How has your major helped you with your work for the Beeck Center?

My economics major has been useful in a lot of my research pertaining to analyzing government interventions in different policy areas and some of the quantitative work I’m doing. I’m fortunate that the ������̳ has a top-tier economics department, where a lot of the courses I’ve taken have shaped my way of thinking in one way or another. I find that I’m frequently able to draw from theoretical frameworks and concepts that I’ve learned in class and apply them to the work I do now.

In my time at Georgetown, through academics, extracurriculars, and some of my work experience, I’ve developed a passion for environmental issues, especially energy systems sustainability and climate change. My work at Beeck has really piqued my interest in applications of data in the global clean energy transition, particularly in relation to energy resource data and geographic information systems. I’m curious about how high-quality data can be used with analytical methods and models to inform investment decisions and power sector planning in a way that is just and equitable.

What inspired you to create this?  

I came to the east coast in 1997 from California, so I had never experienced cicadas before. The last time they emerged in 2004, I had a six-year-old and a four-year-old, and it was so exciting for me and my kids to witness this unbelievable biological occurrence. However, not every child in the neighborhood was thrilled about it – in fact some were quite scared. They were just so full of questions, like “Where did they come from? Why are there so many? What do they eat? Can they hurt me? Why are they so loud?” 

I didn’t know much about cicadas, but as I did my research, I saw that it just took a little knowledge and context for cicadas to go from freaky, annoying invaders to cool creatures, and I felt that I owed it to the next generation of children to spread the word.  

Why is it important to educate others, especially children, about the beauty of cicadas?

This emergence only happens every 17 years, so any kid less than 20 years old has never experienced this phenomenon in their memory – and in fact, if you are less than 17 years old, these little guys are older than you are! The magnitude of this emergence is enormous, as billions of cicadas will come out across 15 states in the eastern part of the US. Currently, insects have a bad rap. For example, lots of people have the idea that bees are always going to sting you, and that prejudice is not entirely counterbalanced by our society’s appreciation for butterflies and other pretty floating insects. 

The 2021 cicada emergence seemed like an opportunity to help explain to an entire generation of young people that bugs are exciting, interesting and a vibrant part of our ecosystem that we should appreciate instead of fear. We hope that by creating this resource, we will help tip the scale and influence people to be more bug-friendly. We want to roll out the insect welcome mat!  

Why is it important for people to like bugs or at least have a deeper understanding of bugs? What do bugs and cicadas in general offer to our world?

Insects are the most common and widespread animal group on earth. While there are a few species that are dangerous and can spread diseases, the vast majority are not harmful to people, and in fact are essential to us. They are pollinators, they move plant material around and help with decomposition and they are lunch for a huge diversity of other animals. Without insects, entire food chains would collapse.

When you take the time to examine them, you also realize that they are incredibly beautiful and intricate. So while cicadas in and of themselves are not necessarily critical to our existence, they are a super cool example of an extreme, bizarre and fascinating life cycle and are part of a larger group that is essential to our life as we know it. 

What materials are available on the website?

Our materials target elementary and middle school students across a variety of different subjects including biology, art, writing, math and history. In the free online resource packet, we wanted to provide a curriculum that was accessible to pandemic-weary and possibly insect-wary teachers and students. We have included ready-to-use materials such as a recorded presentation by me and John, a digital and downloadable workbook in English and Spanish and a haiku contest that goes along with National Poetry Month in April. Our materials also include observations of three 18th-century Brood X emergences by Benjamin Banneker, a local scientist who made some really important observations about cicadas.

Now is a great time to start teaching kids about cicadas because you can already see signs of their upcoming appearance. If you walk around your neighborhood, you will see little holes in the soil, about the size of a dime, under trees; these emergence holes are made by cicadas that are getting ready to crawl up and out of the soil after their 17-year stint underground. We expect that they will join us topside in early to mid-May.

What is so special to you about this particular ecological phenomenon?

John and I are currently conducting a multi-year research project on the indirect ecological effects of cicada emergence in the temperate forest community, so we are already knee-deep in the subject. Both of us know so much more about cicadas than we did 17 years ago, so we decided that it would be entomological malpractice not to take advantage of this once-in-a-generation opportunity to let kids share in the excitement. 

Weiss and Lill will be holding a talk on cicadas’ biology, life cycle, and what they have been doing underground this whole time along with other fascinating facts on April 15th. Please RSVP to join.

Mentoring, Matson, and Methane

A double major in mathematics and computer science, Matson wanted to merge these passions with research on climate change for her senior thesis.

“Climate change is the biggest threat to society and humanity that we are facing today,” says Matson. “It affects all disciplines, so it should be studied through interdisciplinary approaches instead of in isolation. By utilizing advancements in technology and computer science, we can better understand what is happening and fix it.”

 With the help of her advisor, professor who wrote the first-of-its-kind book Mathematics and Climate, Matson looked at previous studies that utilized satellite data to track methane emissions based on their locations. The two decided that this idea could be their jumping-off point.

“We chose to focus on methane as opposed to other greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide because if its emissions are reduced, the resulting problems will go away more quickly than they would with other pollutants,” says Matson.

Making an Improved Model

The satellite data they used was readily available through an international effort, however, the data set itself was sparse. The satellite network tracking methane emissions covers the entire planet, but each satellite is responsible for a huge section of land, making it impossible to pinpoint exactly where large amounts of methane are being emitted. Despite these limitations, researchers are able to tell which areas produce more than others.

“You can look at the data and say ‘it looks like this section of the world has more emissions than that section right now,’ but you can’t get more specific than that,” says Engler. “Sally and I are working to create a better model that would use this same data to describe the emissions over space and time.”

Matson and Engler looked at the data available and charted the emissions recorded at each location individually over time. Simultaneously, they mapped emissions from all locations at one point in time. Matson and Engler used this data to create regression analyses that showed the temporal and spatial relationships in methane emissions around the globe more clearly than before.

Because of this improved data, future research examining the link between pollution and climate change can be refined, and better policies pinpointed at problem areas can be made.

Matson’s Next Steps    

Matson plans to continue her work on the intersection of climate change and technology after graduating from Georgetown. As a recipient of the 2020 Marshall Scholars Award, she will pursue a master’s degree in climate change at the University of East Anglia and a master’s degree in machine learning and machine intelligence from the University of Cambridge.