“Farmers are some of the smartest and most innovative people. They are constantly thinking ahead, planning, and making contingency plans…I feel really lucky that the goal of my job and what I do is to help those people,” said Riya Mehta, BS ’18, about her current role as Congressman Jimmy Panetta’s Legislative Assistant on Agriculture, Energy, and the Environment.
The hands-on education Mehta experienced as a volunteer at the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm during her undergraduate years informs much of her work on Capitol Hill today. She continues to communicate with farmers to better understand the issues they need addressed in Congress.
“My job is so much about people,” Mehta said. “Whether it’s talking to farmers or researchers or other staffers or other offices, it’s very much a people job. The fact that I get to interact with people who care so much, in some ways it reminds me of Earth Systems. This is just another group of people who care about the world.”
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Conventional sunscreen ingredients can damage coral reefs and human health. An immunologist and a marine ecologist teamed up to develop a better approach.
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With support from a Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability Accelerator seed grant, an interdisciplinary team has developed a groundbreaking optical sensor that measures DNA and other key molecules in seawater using light, potentially revolutionizing the study of biodiversity in the enigmatic depths below the ocean’s surface.
