A New Job, A Transition, and A Commitment to Planet Earth

My name is Jack Ding. I want to make a difference in the world.

For the past few years, our society has experienced incredible challenges. Turn on the TV or radio, all I heard was  desperate news - lower-income communities shown much higher death rates of COVID-19 global pandemic, families do not have enough money to rebuild their home and lives from the wildfires in the west coast of the US, poor communities still have yet recovered from Hurricane, unfair water distribution during the Day Zero water crisis in Cape Town, South Africa, and so on. What is more devastating is that not only during disasters, but on a daily basis, many people, but not everyone (certainly not the rich), experience difficulties accessing vital resources, like safe drinking water, sanitation, food, and energy. With everything that was going on in the world, I was a postdoc at Iowa State University, aspired to be a professor at a research institution,  but stuck at home working on a complex computational model (integrated assessment model, in case you are interested) assigned by my lab PI. I felt I wanted to help, but this academic dream I was chasing for so long may not lead to anything meaningful in the short-term. In 2022, I moved away from campus, and pursued a “real” job- the Environmental Justice Technology Fellowship - (or EJ Tech Fellow for short) a joint position at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) and Anthropocene Alliance (A2). 

The fellowship marks a significant departure from my previous experience in academia, where I worked on projects that, while important, did not have as immediate of an impact. During my time at Vanderbilt, I focused on critical natural resources (i.e., water, food, and energy) management in Sub-Saharan-Africa. I, like many other researchers, presented my research findings and computer simulation models at academic conferences to share my knowledge with fellow researchers and graduate students. However, I realized my impact was constrained by the norms of academia, where journal articles and conference presentations are given more weight than practical application. Afterall, not many people whose homes were flooded or burnt went to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting to find solutions of climate change and increasing frequency of extreme weather events.

My work as the EJ Tech Fellow is quite unique where in one job I can work for two different organizations. You may wonder what/who is EPIC and A2? EPIC builds policies that deliver spectacular improvement in the speed and scale of environmental progress. We are committed to finding and highlighting the best approaches to scaling up environmental and public health results quickly. We focus on clean water, endangered species, environmental markets and the use of data and technology in producing environmental and public health outcomes. On the other side, A2 is a non-profit organization supportingwith more than 140 community organizations nationwide. A2 provides technical, scientific, grant writing, and other forms of support to its member communities facing climate and environmental injustices. In this position, I can finally work directlyput my hands on projects that directly engage frontline communities facing urgent environmental issues like floodings or droughts. I leverage not only my science/engineering skill sets, but also the talent of my colleagues at EPIC to tackle the unique problems each community is facing. My ultimate goal is to help them find feasible solutions, mitigation strategies, and the financial resources and capacity to put into action.

One of my roles as an EJ Tech fellow is to help the grant writing team at A2 articulate the site-specific environmental issues that certain communities are facing. For example, Ahora Inc., one of the newest members of A2 in Puerto Rico, is facing threats from future hurricanes and lingering repercussions from Hurricane Maria. I was able to create a project map for their National Coastal Resilience Fund (NFWF) funding proposal based on our conversation with the community leader and grant writing team of A2. In the first three months of my fellowship, I have helped more than 10 A2 communities, like Ahora Inc., apply for grants to NFWF to add protections and resilience for communities who face high risks such as storms and flooding.

I also apply my research experience to projects at EPIC, such as the interactive lead pipe removal map for the United States. Specifically, we calculated how many lead pipes can be replaced with federal funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). Lead is just one of many contaminants regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act that harm the health and wellbeing of people, but it is one of the few contaminants in drinking water that have finally caught national attention. With the current formula, western states can achieve or exceed the goal of replacing all lead pipes with the funding allocated from IIJA. However, other states, specifically in the Great Lakes region, can only have less than 40% of the lead pipes replaced in their states. It is worth noting that the Great Lakes states also bear heaviest lead burden because of the vast amount of lead pipes within the drinking water infrastructure. With the platform provided by EPIC, this work can reach policy makers and peers working on the same issue on national stages such as the White House Get Out the Lead Summit and Partnership and New York Water Week.

I am grateful for the opportunity to work with so many talented people at both EPIC and A2, who share the same passion for making a difference in the world. Although we face numerous challenges in society, I firmly believe that with a good heart, passion, science, and technology, we can bring hope to communities and people to make their lives better and make the world a better place. I also hope more and more folks in academia or doing research can be more direct and engaging. Let’s convert science to policies, distill our research results to actionable messages, and together, we can make a broader impact to the world and the planet we all love.