Student Body

  • Aboutajdine, Samya

    Economics

    Samya Aboutajdine investigates the determinants of private investments in disaster resilience, leveraging granular building permit data across the United States. Her research explores how federal and state interventions—such as disaster relief and industrial policy—shape the construction and upgrading of resilient infrastructure. By combining large language models analysis, causal inference, and economic modeling, she identifies patterns in how households and firms adapt to disaster risks and policy incentives.

  • Adam, Margot

    Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

    My research focuses on electricity transmission in the United States, combining quantitative and qualitative methods to understand how transmission planning can be expanded to support a clean, reliable, and resilient electricity system. My quantitative work uses capacity expansion models to examine how planning processes influence project outcomes, while my qualitative work applies institutional theory to analyze how the structure of Regional Transmission Organizations creates barriers to identifying and building regional and multi-value transmission. Together, my work aims to inform policy recommendations for transmission planning reform in support of the clean energy transition. I am advised by Jesse Jenkins, who is a professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

  • Chen, Jinjin

    Civil and Environmental Engineering

    Jinjin Chen has an interdisplinary education background, holding a Bachelor of Landscape Gardening and a Master of Interdisciplinary Sciences Study. Jinjin’s previous research experience include green infrastructure, ‘sponge cities’ in China, Green View in urban agglomeration, LCA of the PFAS in the carpet and Non-hazardous Industry Waste Management. She is currently working on the Circular Economy, assessing the value waste to energy for a future zero-carbon grid.

  • Claus, Ana

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

    Ana Claus’s research focuses on advancing solid-state sodium battery technologies, with an emphasis on understanding and controlling interfacial stability and microstructure-driven electro–chemo–mechanical behavior. Her work addresses critical challenges related to energy density, cycling stability, and scalability, with the goal of enabling more sustainable and cost-effective energy storage systems. She is particularly interested in how engineered sodium metal architectures can mitigate interfacial degradation and improve performance under realistic operating conditions. Ana is advised by Kelsey B. Hatzell in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

  • Cunningham, Emily

    Chemical and Biological Engineering

    Emily’s research investigates the use of non-thermal plasma-assisted catalysis for conversions of thermodynamically stable molecules, such as CO2 and CH4. Specifically, she is interested in the use of porous catalysts in non-thermal plasma, including metal-organic frameworks, whose tunable structures provide a platform for probing complex plasma-surface interactions. Emily is advised by Professor Michele Sarazen in the CBE department.

  • Das, Ankit

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

    Ankit’s research focuses on advancing additive manufacturing, particularly the Laser Powder Bed Fusion (LPBF) process, to address critical challenges in energy efficiency, material waste reduction, and environmental sustainability. He believes integrating innovative manufacturing techniques with sustainable practices can significantly contribute to global efforts in reducing carbon emissions and promoting clean energy technologies. Ankit is advised by Prof. Craig B. Arnold (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering).

  • Geralis, Foivos

    Architecture

  • Gunady, Ella

    Chemical and Biological Engineering

    Ella Gunady studies how microbes in the soil can support plant growth during drought stress. She is interested in uncovering the genetic mechanisms of these beneficial plant-microbe interactions, with the goal of developing “plant probiotics” that can be applied in the field to promote agricultural resilience. Ella is advised by Professor Jonathan Conway.

  • Iribarren, Carolina

    French and Italian

    Carolina Iribarren specializes in twentieth-century literature and thought, with an emphasis on aesthetics, ethics, and ecology. Her work has appeared (or will soon appear) in French Studies, the Journal of Modern Literature, Simone de Beauvoir Studies, the Journal of the History of Ideas Blog, and The Cambridge History of the American Essay, and discusses such authors as Simone Weil, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, and Susan Sontag. Her current research focuses on Weil’s philosophy of art, notably her ideas on beauty and their social, decolonial, and environmental implications.

  • Mantri, Krishi

    Chemical and Biological Engineering

    Krishi is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Princeton University. His research focuses on the synthetic biology of non-conventional yeasts to produce industrial chemicals beyond ethanol from waste feedstocks. He is passionate about harnessing the power of nature to decarbonize chemical manufacturing — one of the most challenging sectors to reduce carbon emissions in. Outside the lab, Krishi loves being outdoors and picking up new hobbies. He is currently learning to glide.

  • Mayo, Emily

    Civil and Environmental Engineering

    Mayo’s research focuses on the quantification and mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) from wastewater treatment processes. She has surveyed water resource recovery facilities across the US and Canada on GHG measurement and inventorying practices, and hopes to conduct plantwide, continuous GHG measurement at one plant in hopes of informing operational strategies for reducing emissions and energy usage. Mayo is advised by Dr. Z. Jason Ren, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment.

  • Paluku, Daniel Lwanzo

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

    Daniel’s research focuses on studying advanced functional materials for energy storage applications. His works combines materials chemistry, electrochemistry and process design to develop low-energy routes for producing and integrating critical battery materials including graphite, electrolytic manganese dioxide, and solid-state electrolytes.Through this research, he aims to improve how energy storage materials are made, processed, and used in next-generation battery and supercapacitor technologies. Daniel is advised by Professor Craig Arnold, the Susan Dod Brown Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

  • Read, Amy

    Sociology
    Amy Read studies the ways disasters shape communities long after the acute exposure period is over, including the effects on housing markets and residents’ perception of future climate and severe weather risk. Their dissertation combines demographic data with tornado track data to look at long-term temporal and spatial patterns in disaster impacts in the United States. They are also interested in how disaster exposure (and the recovery process itself) reinforces patterns of social inequality. Amy is advised by Filiz Garip, professor of Sociology and Public Affairs.

  • Sugimoto, Haruki

    Sociology

    Haruki Sugimoto studies how natural disasters shape migration and fertility patterns, as well as the consequences of such post-disaster population dynamics. He uses causal inference and demographic methods to analyze large-scale administrative and survey data from the United States, Mexico, and Japan.

  • Sundar, Sahana

    Chemical and Biological Engineering

  • Yang, Qinlan

    Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences

    Qinlan Yang’s research focuses on understanding energetic teleconnections through atmospheric transport associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) using coupled GCMs. Specifically, she investigates the two-way coupling between surface temperature and Earth’s surface energy budget, as well as the large-scale energy redistribution within the Earth system during ENSO events. More broadly, her research interests encompass Earth’s energy budget, cloud-radiative feedback, climate sensitivity, and global warming, with the goal of better understanding climate variability and dynamics using observations and models. Qinlan is advised by Prof. Stephan Fueglistaler, a professor in the Department of Geosciences and the Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences.

  • Zhang, Shannon

    Chemical and Biological Engineering

    Shannon Zhang uses molecular dynamics simulations to study polymer dynamics in heterogeneous environments. She is interested in the development of polymer-based materials with applications in energy storage and carbon capture. Shannon is advised by Professor Michael A. Webb.