DDL is excited to welcome seven new research assistants (RAs) to our team for the fall semester! With expertise ranging from human-computer interaction to sociology to environmental science, our new RAs bring a wide range of new skills and perspectives to the lab.
This semester, these RAs will work on a range of cutting-edge research projects, from investigating the societal implications of AI on climate policy to exploring disparities in urban heat. We are thrilled to welcome such a talented, diverse group of RAs to the team and are excited to see what they accomplish in the upcoming semester.
Elizabeth Brown
Elizabeth is a PhD student in Public Policy, where her research is focused on the intersection of development economics and environmental policy. Broadly, she is interested in exploring how policy can both reduce global poverty and benefit the environment. Specifically, she is researching topics like the off-grid solar energy market in Sub-Saharan Africa, the social and environmental impacts of critical mineral extraction for renewable energy products, and how climate-related disasters affect the global South.
Elizabeth grew up in Cary, and became interested in development economics during her undergraduate studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. After graduating, she joined RTI International as an applied economist, where she gained environmental policy experience and narrowed down her focus for graduate school.
Since joining DDL this summer, Elizabeth’s work has centered on tracking sub-national climate actions. She is also starting work on training a machine-learning model to identify corporate greenwashing. After finishing her doctoral work, Elizabeth hopes to continue research ineither in an academic, government or nonprofit setting.
Silvia Landa
Silvia is a Ph.D. student in the Environmental Sciences and Engineering department, supported by a Fulbright Scholarship. She holds a Master’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Utah State University, which she pursued with support from a USAID scholarship, focusing on water resource management and hydrology. Prior to her Ph.D., she worked in the development sector and engaged in policy advocacy across water, sanitation, and climate resilience areas. Her research interests include multilevel water governance and enhancing our understanding of governmental decision-making processes.
At DDL, Silvia contributes to the ChatNDC project. In this role, she prepares fact sheets for selected countries and offers insights into opportunities for strengthening national climate measures through the ChatNDC initiative. She is enthusiastic about exploring how new AI technologies can be leveraged to support government climate policy strategies. Silvia hopes that the experience she gains at DDL will broaden her understanding of the interactions between national and local governments and non-state actors, potentially influencing the advancement of environmental policy agendas.
Isabella Ukariwo
Isabella is an Information Science grad student with a focus on Human Computer interaction for UI/UX joining DDL as a graphic and web designer. She graduated in May 2024 with a major in Information Science and a minor in creative writing for fiction. Her hobbies include art, books, music, film and longboarding.
Isabella is excited to work at DDL and to be a part of a team that creates awareness around environmental issues and contributes important findings to the climate research community. Following graduation, she plans to explore more facets of the design world where she can make data visualizations more accessible and user-friendly to encourage people to interact with important, but sometimes dense information.
Julie (Juhyun) Lee
Julie is a Computer Science Master’s student at UNC Chapel Hill. She majored in Statistics and French Literature during her undergraduate studies in Seoul, South Korea. Julie is particularly interested in deep learning, especially NLP and multi-modal learning. She was inspired to apply to DDL because of ChatNetZero, an LLM application that aims to demystify net zero and climate claims. She is excited to work on this project because ChatNetZero can provide more accurate answers than competitors and provide relevant context, enabling users to make more informed decisions. Working on this project, Julie will contribute to developing a climate policy-specific language model that is safe from hallucinations and bias.
Will Carney
Will is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in Economics and Public Policy with a concentration in Climate and a minor in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He joined DDL to work on developing frameworks to evaluate subnational climate policy and research the implications of US-China relations on climate change and Southeast Asia.
Outside of his main tasks at DDL, Will also leads the Thematic Working Group on Carbon Markets & Article 6 of the Paris Agreement for the UNFCCC’s research constituency. Post-grad, he intends to take a year off to backpack Southeast Asia before pursuing a degree in international law and continuing to contribute to the UNFCCC in a negotiating capacity. His work at DDL is providing a strong foundation for these ambitions by enhancing his understanding of complex climate policies and the geopolitical factors that influence them. Will formally joined the DDL team in summer 2024.
Cam Kaplinger
Cam is a rising junior majoring in Data Science. Born and raised in Raleigh, NC, he loves watching sports and going to Carolina sports games. He also loves traveling and trying new foods.
Cam is excited to work at DDL to bring further awareness to the dangers of climate change. He is also forward to bringing data-driven insights to the climate change community and working with other research assistants and scientists. In the future, he aims to work in baseball analytics, and believes the data science skills learned at DDL will help him to this aim.
Amelia Wallace
Amelia is a second-year PhD student in the sociology department with undergraduate majors in Sociology and Psychology and minors in geography and environmental science. She is interested in studying and researching environmental sociology, attachment to place, migration, qualitative and mixed methods.
At DDL, Amelia is working on ChatNDC, an upcoming project that is leveraging LLMs to make national climate policy documents more accessible to assist policymakers in enhancing linkages with private actors and subnational governments for overall enhanced ambition. She is excited to be a part of this project to make vital climate information available and comprehensible to everyone. She looks forward to using her role at DDL time to further develop her policy investigation skills, familiarity with AI and its industry and involvement in the fight against climate change.
We are looking forward to seeing all that our new RAs will accomplish at DDL this semester and beyond!
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