Washington state is rapidly increasing renewable energy infrastructure, such as utility solar, to meet the state’s zero emission goals by 2045. However, struggles over land have raised concerns about the impacts of utility solar on largely rural, energy producing communities. Those impacts are spread unevenly across class, race, and indigeneity. In Klickitat County, residents of Goldendale have mobilized to create CEASE – Citizens Educated Against Solar Energy. Some Yakama Nation members have worked with the group to oppose solar infrastructure. I am investigating how solar energy impacts energy producing communities. I am conducting ethnographic interviews with relevant parties to solar siting in Klickitat, including: CEASE, members of the Yakama Nation, political representatives, developers, and agricultural organizations. This research expands on the growing field of energy justice literature that investigates how racial capitalism functions within energy systems. Is the use of rural and tribal land for energy extraction evidence of perpetual dispossession and colonization? Solar corporations in Goldendale are using state apparatuses to privitize and profit from rural and indigenous land, placing the burdens of energy production on rural residents and indigenous communities. Research on land use and solar energy helps us better understand how the clean energy transition interacts with power inequities, class, and indigeneity.

This research compares the COVID-19 control policies and the use of Contact Tracing Apps (CTAs) in Shenzhen, China, and Seattle (King County, WA). The research examines the differences between local government's policies of pandemic control, contact tracing response, and the discrepancies between CTAs design, mechanism, and the ways of defining close contacts. This first part provides background for a better understanding of the differences in government policies and CTAs for the two metropolises. The second part of the research analyzes data available to show the effectiveness of contact tracing apps and the results of differences in government pandemic control policies and response time. Visualizations are created using existing data and construct timelines of the pandemic and usage of CTAs, demonstrating the effects of CTAs on certain indicators such as numbers of hospitalizations, people in quarantine, cases, and deaths. The timeline will be divided based on different COVID-19 mutations that were dominant in the areas, as well as the version updates on the CTAs. After analyzing the effectiveness of CTAs on pandemic control, the research explores the overall impacts of CTA, COVID-19, and government’s pandemic responses on society as a whole, including the inequalities between races, different income groups, and migrations. This research may generate insights on the possible policies and ways of utilizing CTAs that are beneficial to the pandemic control as well as the economy and residents' daily life. Besides, as there are few studies on CTAs’ effectiveness on COVID-19 control, this study can also suggest possible directions for other researchers. In the end, the research generates visualizations that tell a story from the beginning of how the government deals with the pandemic and how their responses and CTAs had an effect on the pandemic control and the society, especially on migration and inequalities.

Historically, one’s social and geographical position can result in disproportionate levels of exposure to harmful environmental toxins and contaminants. The field of Environmental Justice aims at addressing this inequality by redistributing both the environmental burdens and benefits among all members of society. My research focuses on access to “blue spaces,” or public spaces built around bodies of water that confer health benefits and promote active lifestyles, as an environmental justice issue. Given that Minnesota prides itself with being the land of “10,000 lakes” on every license plate, my research aims to see if the state slogan may be misleading as these lakes may only be accessible to some members of my community. Exploratory in nature, my research intends to reveal possible inequalities regarding access to blue space—even if not clearly visible in the everyday landscape. Through the formulation of a Blue Space Equality Index, which includes several proxy variables for accessibility such as transportation routes, water quality, sidewalks and bench availability, and recreational usages, I will examine three blue space regions in Minneapolis. Using this index in conjunction with demographic and property values data, I intend to represent the local environment surrounding these spaces. A closer investigation of Minneapolis is relevant and timely considering the several high-profile cases of systematic racism in the city’s recent past which have made global headlines; Minneapolis is just a snapshot of what is occurring across the country and that closer examination of the environment is needed to better understand the forces underlying environmental and socioeconomic disparities in Minneapolis. My investigation of blue space accessibility will shed light on how the residents of Minneapolis connect with the environment around them and potentially expose the harsh realities for some community members who call the Twin Cities home.

When discussing racial tensions in the United States, the focus is usually on the relations between blacks and whites, and Asian perspectives are not included in racial discussions. This puts Asian Americans in a dilemma because both racial groups avoid identifying with them. I made two versions of the survey questionnaire. The English version was made by Google form and spread in the US. The target sample population are international students, immigrants, and Asian-born American. The Chinese version was made by Tencent form and spread in China. The target sample population is people who have never come to the US. The Tencent form collected the controlled sample data which are people who came to the US for zero years, and the Google form collected the dependent sample data which are people who stay in the US for different years. While doing the survey, I also conducted interviews. There are two versions of the interview questions. One is for international students and immigrants, and another is for American-born Asians. By visualizing on PowerBI, the percentage of change in the Anti-Asian hate crime rate in 2020, we can find that the largest growth was in New York which increase 833%. Only Washington DC has decreased in percentage which is -83% (Raw data from Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism). The relation between “time spent in the US” and “Asian/ Asian Americans" attitude toward Black Americans seems a little complex. When Asians first came to the US, they generally hold fears of unknown towards Black Americans, but as the time they stays in the US passed, they feel better than before with Black Americans. Asians also suffered more discrimination than they projected because the percentage of people who answered yes to the questions that “Asians are receiving discrimination” to have spent time in the United States is higher than the percentage who have never been to the United States. Asians are also not as indifferent to racial equality as other races are rumored to be. The percentage of Asians who support BLM is even much higher than that of whites and slightly higher than that of Latinos. It's just that Asians tend to express their thoughts in a relatively calm manner such as showing solidarity on social media and donating.
 

Asian Americans are underrepresented in public health research in the U.S. My research aims to explore the historical, social, and institutional factors that contribute to this, both in Seattle and the broader U.S. I will identify these factors through an extended literature review and demonstrate their role in constraining the scope of Asian public health research using a case-study on industrial pollution in Seattle’s Duwamish Waterway. The case-study will focus on Seattle’s Industrial District, Beacon Hill, and surrounding neighborhoods because of their proximity to the Duwamish Waterway and high exposure to industrial pollutants, such as benzene. This region also has a large Asian population. Genome-wide studies have shown that Asians are genetically predisposed to pancreatic dysfunction when chronically exposed to benzene and other volatile-organic-compounds. Pancreatic dysfunction can lead to diabetes mellitus, a health condition in which the body is unable to process glucose naturally. The spatial overlap of Asian residents and industrial pollution around the Duwamish Waterway is concerning and merits investigation. My methodology includes an extended literature review and a quantitative geospatial analysis of a Seattle case-study. The literature review explores systemic limitations of public health research on Asian Americans, examining factors like systemic racism and data collection issues through a critical Science and Technology Studies (STS) lens. The geospatial analysis will be used during the Duwamish Waterway case-study. I will use publicly available data to map and compare Asian population sizes, diabetes incidence, and industrial pollution in Seattle. The gaps in existing data for these factors will make it difficult to draw conclusive generalizations from the case-study, but paired with STS analysis, highlighting these gaps can contribute to improving public health research by demonstrating the limitations that currently hinder Asian public health research in Seattle and pointing the way to future research to fill in what is missing.