Meet the Laos Ener­gy Mod­el­ing and Pol­i­cy Analy­sis (Under­grad­u­ate!) Team:

The focus of this inter-dis­ci­pli­nary and inter-uni­ver­si­ty research group is to devel­op sus­tain­able ener­gy, water, and land-use sce­nar­ios for Laos, and to work with local stake-hold­ers on the costs and ben­e­fits for com­mu­ni­ties, the nation, and the region­al com­merce in ener­gy, water, food, tim­ber and oth­er commodities.

Aadi­tee Kudrimoti 

Bio: Aadi­tee is a fourth-year at UC Berke­ley study­ing polit­i­cal sci­ence and pub­lic pol­i­cy with a con­cen­tra­tion in ener­gy, devel­op­ment, and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. Aadi­teeis orig­i­nal­ly from Tuc­son, Ari­zona, where she began to devel­op an inter­est in inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal affairs. At UC Berke­ley, Aadi­teeis work­ing on projects in the polit­i­cal econ­o­my of Chi­nese devel­op­ment finance, rur­al elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, and col­lec­tive action. Aadi­tee­has become espe­cial­ly inter­est­ed in how the rise of renew­able tech­nol­o­gy is influ­enc­ing ener­gy diplo­ma­cy around the world. She hopes to pur­sue a career in acad­e­mia and pub­lic pol­i­cy and work on gov­er­nance tools to build the bar­gain­ing capac­i­ty of LDCs against MNCs, for­eign state-owned enter­pris­es, etc. on the sub­ject of FDI and oth­er types of invest­ment. She sees SWITCH-Laos as hav­ing the poten­tial to serve as a crit­i­cal tool in assist­ing the increase of the Lao people’s bar­gain­ing pow­er over FDI in the ener­gy sec­tor and thus their auton­o­my in deter­min­ing their own eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Out­side school, Aaditee’s inter­ests include dance, food jour­nal­ism, and cooking.

Alex Lath­em

Bio: Alex Lath­em is a third-year under­grad­u­ate at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty. He is a physics major with sev­er­al years of expe­ri­ence using pro­gram­ming lan­guages, includ­ing Python SQL, C, and Bash, to ana­lyze sci­en­tif­ic data. Pre­vi­ous research projects Alex has worked on include astrom­e­try of near-Earth aster­oids and the cre­ation of a Hub­ble curve through the analy­sis of Type Ia super­novae. Alex spent the sum­mer of 2019 work­ing on the SWITCH mod­el for Chi­na, and is very excit­ed to apply the skills he learned there to a ver­sion for Laos. Out­side of research, Alex is also inter­est­ed in music, video game design, lin­guis­tics, and history.

Ash­ley Yip

Bio: Ash­ley is a sec­ond-year under­grad­u­ate study­ing envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence with an empha­sis in glob­al pol­i­tics. She moved to New Mex­i­co, where she devel­oped an inter­est in envi­ron­men­tal affairs. At UC Berke­ley, she is involved in a pre-law asso­ci­a­tion that helped her explore her inter­est in law and how she may inte­grate that into envi­ron­men­tal­ism. Off cam­pus, she is work­ing on a sex edu­ca­tion reform project in Sin­ga­pore with the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion. She is con­stant­ly explor­ing the inter­sec­tion between pol­i­cy, edu­ca­tion, and the envi­ron­ment. She hopes to return home to Sin­ga­pore and pur­sue a career in inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal pol­i­cy or law with­in South­east Asia. Ash­ley chose to work on SWITCH-Laos not only because green­ing ASEAN’s eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is essen­tial to tack­ling cli­mate change, but also because she is famil­iar with the demo­graph­ic. She has done research in regards to both urban and rur­al agri­cul­ture in Asia and the US, and led research for envi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment in busi­ness oper­a­tions. Out­side of school, her inter­ests include climb­ing, hik­ing, piano, and camper vans.

Rachel Ng

Bio: Rachel is a sec­ond-year Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Data Sci­ence major. A Sin­ga­pore-native, Rachel describes that SWITCH-Laos extreme­ly impor­tant to her because it is an impor­tant step towards the ener­gy secu­ri­ty of South­east Asia. She believes that the sus­tain­able elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of South­east Asia is key to region­al grid sta­bil­i­ty and ener­gy trade. She is pur­su­ing SWITCH-Laos as crit­i­cal in lead­ing the way towards sus­tain­able elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. Rachel is inter­est­ed in the inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty between cli­mate change and com­mu­ni­ty, explor­ing how com­mu­ni­ty based issues caused by cli­mate change can be alle­vi­at­ed through data. Fur­ther­more, Rachel is cur­rent­ly con­cerned about equal access to edu­ca­tion and vol­un­teers week­ly as a men­tor to ele­men­tary school stu­dents. In the future, she hopes to return to Sin­ga­pore and guide envi­ron­men­tal change through cre­at­ing an ecosys­tem of sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties and busi­ness­es. Her hob­bies include dance, rock climb­ing and water sports.