In this episode, we were fortunate to speak with Afreen Siddiqi, an incredible scientist with numerous awards, fellowships, and publications.

She is a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  and a visiting scholar at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School. She has an S.B. in Mechanical Engineering, an S.M. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Systems, all from MIT.

Her research focuses on questions of systems planning and performance and water, energy, agriculture, and space systems.

In past work, she has developed approaches for studying couplings between water, energy, and food security, formulated adaptive decision frameworks for infrastructure planning, created methods for assessing new urban infrastructure, and developed methods for identifying opportunities for coordinating resource use. In more recent work, she has formulated new metrics and frameworks for quantifying equity in sociotechnical systems with applications in irrigation systems.

In this episode, we speak about some of her recent analytical work, the role that scientists play in sustainability, and how we can all be more proactive about using our strengths to help the climate change cause.