The social cost of air pollution
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Eric Brown from the MIT Industrial Liaison Program. We had a pleasant conversation about my current leadership role at MIT/CRE and our research at the Sustainable Urbanization Lab. I would like to share some of the key points from the interview.
During the interview, I explore three areas of study. First, air pollution and consumer cities. While many researchers have explored the risks of air pollution to physical health, we studied the impact of air pollution in a much less evident aspect: emotional health. Using a unique approach through social media, we collected information that can lead us to understand the emotional toll that air pollution has on people’s lives. This analysis is even of greater importance if we look at consumer cities, where people are attracted due to the existing urban amenities. However, they can feel disincentivized if there are health risks like air pollution.
Professorships at MIT
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by MIT Spectrum about my current role as Faculty Director of the MIT Center For Real Estate and also as a leader of the MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab. This was quite an opportunity to share my vision and appreciate all the hard work that has been done at MIT to address global challenges, mainly fast urbanization and climate change.
MIT is not only an environment where we can all develop ourselves and do research on our fields but also a place that enables collaboration across multiple disciplines. That is unique in a research environment. MIT is widely known for its innovative reputation through its top-notch engineers. Over the past few decades, it has also shown an excellent research capacity in economics, architecture, and many other fields.