Sylvia is currently working as a postdoc in a fundamental physics lab at Princeton. Though her daily work is not energy related, she is close to the STEP (Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy) program at the Woodrow Wilson School. She has had the opportunity to meet the authors of papers that she studied during her MAP Fellowship and to work with a professor on a class about the use of science in environmental policy.

Fellowship

While at UCS, Sylvia developed metrics on the relative environmental impacts (air, water, land) of using coal versus renewables and other alternatives for producing electricity, and quantified the impacts on the US under future high coal use scenarios.

In addition, she quantified state expenditures on coal, natural gas, and oil used for electricity production and the extent to which states are net importers or exporters of those resources.

Finally, she compared the preliminary results of UCS’s climate solutions roadmap to projections made by two other leading experts that will be helpful in validating and explaining the differences in UCS’s projections.

“In the two years that we have had MAP fellows, their work products have been thoughtful, well-researched, and useful in advancing our organization’s goals. In particular, they have been tremendously helpful in advancing research on issues that are critically important to our work, but are not necessarily as time sensitive.”

—Jeff Deyette and Steve Clemmer

“I learned how people use numbers differently in the science policy world than in science. I learned about the difference between analysis and lobbying and the narratives used in each. I got a glimpse of how DC works and how the coal industry works. I learned about how urgent the climate change/energy problems are and how large the challenges are.”

—Sylvia Smullin