Mentor Interviews
Get to know the heads and helpers of COSMOS!
Photo by Ana Cabrera
Macrocosm: Could you briefly introduce yourself to the newsletter, what do you do, your background, how long have you been at COSMOS?
Professor Yihsu Chen: This is my second year at COSMOS, and my background is in the sustainability field, with a master's degree in public health, undergraduate degree in environmental science and technology, and PhD in environmental engineering. My research is focused on applying mathematical modeling grounded in economic principles for policy analysis in the energy transportation and water resource areas. |
YC: I’ve always been interested in environmental engineering, but my interest in public policy was because of the lack of evidence-based research in the field. My focus is coming up with numeral models for analysis of yet-to-be implemented policy, so that when for example governments propose new energy policies without careful analysis, I develop numerical models grounded in economic principles to help understand potential unintended consequences of such policies. In addition, these models show the distribution of effects, which identifies who would lose in the enactment of a policy, such as specific income classes or producers, and how that might affect electricity costs. Some of my work also falls within review of existing policy, which reviews information taken over several years and shows the magnitude of consequences of a policy.
YC: Making an impact on policy, such as on things policymakers and academia haven’t considered, and when you can be the first person to show a certain problem with the proposed policy, such as when I put together the first few papers to to highlight the problem of emissions leakage, and to show the importance of designing policy that factors in the problem.
YC: I think the optimal tariff design paper I presented in my discovery lecture on Tuesday was one of my favorites because it’s so relevant and timely, you can always think of problems that no one really cares about. I’m proud of this specific paper since it’s tied to a really realistic and timely problem, and addresses something that the government and utilities companies are trying to figure out.
YC: I want people to remember that technology can only get you so far, and eventually you’ll have to introduce human behavioral change, and we can use economics for this, since people respond to price signals in economics. To deal with climate change, regardless of how good technology is, you have to factor in human behavioral change. So when engineers design new technologies, they have to factor in that humans will always try to optimize what they do and may not use the technologies in intended ways.
YC: If you’re interested in engineering, you still need some social science component in your educational background because that’s what’s necessary to solve the climate change problem. When industries engineer solutions they need to have a sense of equity in mind and understand that engineering solutions may always have unintended consequences for underrepresented populations or low-income communities, and keep that in mind when you design systems.
YC: I don’t think students should just take away what you are taught, but also appreciate going beyond high school, the research papers, lecture topics and college environment, since it helps students see more of a big picture of the world than a high school environment, with everyone exploring diverse aspects of a field such as economics, technology, and social science, even in the same cluster instead of just on just one class like Calculus BC.
YC: I mountain bike, fishing, and when I lived on the East Coast, fly fishing. Fly fishing is like meditation to me, I learned where fish hid over time. Wading into an upstream, you have to read the water, like a fish, and predict where the fly will be, cast your fly rod, and watch the fish take your bait. One time I remember really well, I was dry-fly fishing, where your bait is above the water, and I saw a trout come up and snap the bait, which was awesome. You don’t get to see that in the West Coast, partially because of the channel hydrological systems, the human engineered systems built to manage water resources that have been built here. There’s always multiple dams on the rivers here, and you just don’t get to fly fish here, while you can do it anywhere on the East Coast, and that’s the part I miss the most about there.