GSA Spotlight: Tina Liu
The Impacts of Forest Fires on Air Quality and Public Health in India Tianjia (Tina) Liu, who joined the Mittal Institute as a Graduate Student Associate for academic year 2021-2022, is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard. Her research focuses on using satellite data and atmospheric modeling to quantify the impacts of fires on air quality and public health in India, Indonesia, and globally.
T
he Mittal Institute interviewed Tina about her interdisciplinary research.
Mittal Institute: What are your academic interests, and how or why did you first become interested in your current research topics? Tina Liu: I first became interested in research on fires and air quality during my junior year at Columbia University, when I applied for an undergraduate research assistantship at the Earth Institute. For the project, I used satellite fire data and air quality measurements to determine if agricultural fires had any large impacts on air quality in major Indian cities, such as Delhi and Bangalore.
During my undergraduate years, I also explored other research topics, such as paleoclimate and oceanography, at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, but most of the other projects were not as relevant in today’s world and required extensive lab work. Mittal Institute: When focusing on forest fires and climate change, why is it that your research is centered on India and Indonesia? Likewise, can you explain the linkage between wildfires and climate change? Tina Liu: While my India and Indonesia work focuses on how and why humans use fire and the consequences for air quality and public health, climate
The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University
