Engineering Change: Luna Yin’s Journey from Shad to Harvard
When Luna Yin arrived on campus as a freshman environmental engineering student at Harvard University last fall, she was filled with excitement as she took in her new surroundings at one of North America’s most iconic academic institutions. Though she had long been working towards a post-secondary experience that included time in a prestigious program, the path she was beginning was one that had only recently shown itself to her.
“In high school, a lot of what I heard from family and friends was that if I was interested in science, I should pursue computer science, because that’s something that’s relevant to current job options. So, when I first heard about environmental engineering and what that field looked like through Anis, my Program Director at Shad, I was really intrigued.”
Luna met Anis Haque in the summer of 2022 at Shad’s University of Calgary campus where he works as an esteemed professor in the university’s Engineering department when not acting as a Shad Program Director. His firsthand experience in climate-related engineering projects offered Luna a unique window into the field and inspired her to consider environmental engineering as a possible post-secondary pathway.
“Anis told us about a solar panel project that he was working on in Calgary, talking about creating these movable, sustainable homes that had solar panels on them. And it was a really cool project, mainly because it was focused on helping people access really affordable solar panels and focusing on how to benefit the environment and the people living within it, which was really amazing.”
Luna loved the idea of pursuing a career path that would allow her to flex her STEM muscles while making a meaningful difference in the world, and before meeting Anis, she hadn’t been sure how to combine those two passions in a professional capacity.
“I’ve always wanted a career doing something that genuinely betters the world and makes a big difference. And environmental engineering gives me the chance to do that because I have the opportunity to work on really big projects and really cool research that interacts with climate change and how we can mitigate it. That’s a dream that I picked up from my time at Shad with Anis.”
Contributing meaningfully to her community is something Luna has long been passionate about. A strong advocate for LGBTQ2S+ rights, Luna has spent much of her free time giving voice to her peers in the queer community and celebrating their contribution to the arts and larger social discourse through her not-for-profit work. She shared her own struggle to reconcile her Asian identity with her queer identity in a Shad profile in celebration of Pride Month in June of 2023, a profile that went on to inform her Harvard application essay.
“I applied the year that affirmative action in the US for colleges was overturned, and I was told by certain people at school and in my community not to write about cultural identity. But ultimately, I felt that that was a topic that really resonated with me, and having the Shad profile about that really boosted my confidence and showed me that my work and identity was something that mattered, and so I wrote about it for my application essay and was accepted to Harvard. I’m so thankful to Shad for that.”
Luna chose Harvard because she was excited about the small, innovative team of professors that make up the environmental engineering department.
“I’m exploring lots of different courses, but environmental engineering in particular is something that I really love here at Harvard because the department isn’t particularly big. I think it’s a really special place because the professors are just so passionate about being involved in work that genuinely benefits the world and turning out technologies that make a big difference.”
Luna is excited to be working on one such project this summer, MethaneSAT, run by Harvard engineering professor, Dr. Steve Wofsy. MethaneSAT is a newly developed satellite launched last year to orbit the globe and pick up methane emissions from oil and gas production sites. Areas of elevated emissions can indicate a leak in infrastructure, which the satellite quickly identifies and relays to those on the ground to initiate a repair of the affected area. Methane is one of the most significant greenhouse gases affecting climate change, and so technologies like MethaneSAT play a crucial role in limiting unnecessary environmental harms from human activity.
“There aren’t a lot of reliable systems that make it easy to pick up on these kinds of methane leaks because they’re hard to see, and if you want to try and find them, a lot of the time you have to use drones or ground imagery to do that. And that can be slow and difficult because most of the time these sites are really large. I’m excited to have the opportunity to work on a project that is having such a huge impact reducing unnecessary emissions by offering a much faster way of addressing the problem of leaks.”
Luna’s work will entail monitoring imagery and performing data analyses from the Uinta Basin, an area that poses imaging difficulties for the satellite due to the topography of the land and its unique weather conditions.
“I’m going to be taking a look at winds within a particular oil and gas production site in the U.S. His team has had a bit of trouble looking for methane over the Uinta Basin, which is an area with some unusual wind activity due to its mountainous terrain. I’m really excited to contribute to the project and hopefully helping to solve this problem.”
The tangible work experience will prove invaluable as Luna continues her academic journey and considers her professional options. She recently joined Harvard’s Consulting on Business and the Environment (CBE) team to explore the field of environmental consulting for sustainability projects in the business world. Though she’s unsure of which specific job role she’ll eventually fill, she knows it will be related in some way to advancing the fight against climate change to help avoid the worst social and economic outcomes.
“My time at Shad with Anis really showed me how I could marry my passion with my skillset and use it to do something meaningful, even in the face of obstacles. Anis showed me that even though he was operating in a region where oil and gas was an important industry and so people might have been less interested in renewable energy, he was still finding a way to pursue that mission to make a difference. That was a really important thing for me to see and use as a guide as I pursue my own goals of advancing sustainability.”
