Climate Change and Public Health is at the Heart of Aspiring Kanders Churchill Nominee

Congratulations to Audrey Yun, Northeastern University’s Kanders Churchill Nominee for 2024-2025. Established in 2017, the Kanders Churchill Scholarship’s goal is to find candidates who can address the divide between science and public policy. Each year, two Kanders Churchill Scholarships are awarded to students with a degree in a STEM field to pursue a Master’s in Public Policy at Cambridge University.

Audrey Yun, COS’25, Biochemistry
Mentors: Dessey Raytcheva, Daniela Pasturczak

Audrey is committed to driving change at the intersection of scientific research and practical policy implementation. With a background in biochemistry and behavioral neuroscience, she has explored computational data’s role in scientific advancements, specifically in climate policy, and in developing preventative guidelines that mitigate environmental impacts on public health in vulnerable communities. Audrey aims to address how traditional policymaking struggles to capture real-time environmental data, limiting the effectiveness of interventions in evolving scenarios. She aims to bridge the gap between data and policy by advocating for integrating computational models into environmental regulations. Her interest in science policy was sparked by her combined fascination with independent scientific research from the Biology Project Lab, her time in the Dialogue of Civilizations program, where she saw inequalities in public health, and furthered during her time as a Patient Care Technician at Massachusetts General Hospital. There, she realized the limitations of reactive hospital policies, which led her to explore national policies in Washington, D.C. Most recently, at Data-Smart City Solutions, Audrey facilitated data-backed policy decisions using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to transform complex datasets into actionable insights. On campus, she has been a mentor and Programming Chair for DREAM OG in Roxbury while also pursuing recreational activities such as hiking and writing narrative non-fiction.