Kanders Churchill Nominee Advocates for Clean Water

The Churchill-Kanders Scholarship was established in 2017 to address the growing divide between science and public policy. Each year, two students who have studied in the STEM fields are selected to join the Churchill cohort and enroll in the MPhil for Public Policy at Cambridge University.

Hyun Lee COE/Bouve’23, Environmental Engineering and Health Science
Mentors: Kelsey Pieper, Michael Trisolini, Sara Wylie, Auroop Ganguly

Hyun Lee, intercollege dual, is interested in crafting scientifically informed environmental policy to improve human health. While a student at Northeastern, he has been part of several high-impact research projects surrounding water, environmental justice, and health science. In 2021, Hyun joined a team working under Professor Sara Wylie and contributed to “What Does Chelsea Creek Do for You?” with data visualizations demonstrating the impacts of permit violations missed by the Environmental Protection Agency.  Excited by this work, Hyun began conducting research with Professor Kelsey Pieper, examining potential well-water contamination from recent floods and hurricanes in North Carolina, where one in four people use wells as their source of drinking water. Shortly after this experience, Hyun traveled to Tanzania on a Dialogues of Civilization course, taught by civil engineering Professor Auroop Ganguly, which examined climate hazards and adaptation. Intrigued by work that implicated the built environment, Hyun took part in an NSF-REU program, Green Infrastructure for Sustainable Urban Environments, at the University of Tennessee, where he worked on detecting the presence of Candida auris, a fungal pathogen, in wastewater. Outside of research, Hyun he served as President of Northeastern’s Taekwondo Club and currently works for BlueWave Solar.