E&ES doctoral student is selected for NASA fellowship
Boston College Earth and Environmental Sciences graduate student Xinyi (Skylar) Yang has been awarded a three-year, $150,000 fellowship by NASA to support her doctoral studies through the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) program.
E&ES graduate student Xinyi (Skylar) Yang.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award and NASA’s support for my doctoral research,” Yang said. “This recognition affirms the importance of my work while also highlighting the excellence of our graduate program and research team at Boston College. Knowing that NASA values these efforts inspires me to push further and continue contributing to a better understanding of our changing planet.”
Yang’s proposal was among approximately 1,485 submitted, including 539 in the Earth Science Division, from which only 54 projects were selected for funding. Her graduate project, which will be developed into her doctoral thesis, is titled “Toward Accurate Fire Emission Estimation: Integrating NASA Satellite and Reanalysis Data with Machine Learning into a Terrestrial Biosphere Model.”
“Fires release greenhouse gases, smoke, and tiny particles that affect both the climate and human health,” Yang explained. “But current estimates of these emissions are often uncertain, because it’s hard to know exactly how much vegetation burns during each fire event. In many cases, these estimates come from fixed tables that don’t capture real-world variation, especially as climate change alters fire behavior.”
Her doctoral research combines field data, NASA satellite observations, climate data, and machine learning to replace these fixed values with more dynamic and accurate estimates of burned vegetation, she said, and then applies them in a terrestrial ecosystem model to provide a clearer picture of fire emissions and their role in our changing world.
Yang works under the supervision of climate scientist Professor Hanqin Tian, who has a joint appointment in E&ES and the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society.
“This is an exceptionally competitive and prestigious achievement,” said Schiller Institute Seidner Family Executive Director Laura J. Steinberg. “This is a strong testament to the excellence of our [E&ES] Ph.D. graduate program, the Schiller Institute, and the quality of Dr. Tian’s mentorship.”