The Higher Education Action Team held its monthly updates on Monday, June 5th at 8 pm EDT. This session was a Climate Career Connections Panel, featuring professionals working in the climate space as engineers.  

Our guests were Robert Fetell and Edward Shao. 

Robert Fetell is a Civil & Environmental Engineering graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where his research investigates the interpretation of InSAR data for monitoring mine waste storage facilities (tailings dams). The inability to predict the advent of mine tailings dam failures has caused devastating environmental, economic and human consequences over recent decades and, currently, 18.3% of active upstream tailings dams report notable stability concerns (or a failure to confirm or certify stability at some point in their history). Since the increasing frequency and severity of failure events is expected to continue with growing metals demand for clean energy technologies, applications of new remote sensing techniques are needed to increase resilience capacity and provide early warning systems for downstream communities. Robert has an MS in Engineering Geology from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor’s in Earth Science. Robert also founded a 501(c)(3) focused on youth climate leadership, the Resilience Youth Network, and serves on the Advisory Council to the Aspen Institute’s Future Climate Leaders Initiative.

Edward Shao is an environmental engineer with a passion for clean waters, bioremediation, and good governance. He has experience working in the public sector for federal and state agencies, along with the private sector. With this experience, he has chosen to launch initiatives to bridge environmental spaces with private and public stakeholders and in doing so, bridge the gap between activists and "the system."

Missed the call? Take a look at the action sheet or watch the recording to catch up.