From Orbit to Earth: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Studying Land-Use Change In Costa Rica

Almost three years ago, during my freshman spring at Stanford, I took a class that changed the trajectory of my academic path. The class was HUMBIO 114: Global Change and Emerging Infectious Disease, taught by Professor Jamie Jones, and it taught anthropological and mathematical approaches to modeling infectious disease spread, as well as how climate change is influencing those dynamics. As someone interested in modeling and CS but unsure what I wanted to do with those skills, I saw the ways computational methods could be applied so directly to a topic I was both fascinated by and passionate about pursuing. 

Fast forward three years, and I am wrapping up a degree in Computer Science on the AI track, where the skills I have built have allowed me to make a meaningful impact on answering the kinds of questions I was fascinated by in that HUMBIO class. I have spent the last few years working in the lab of Professor Erin Mordecai, on a project investigating the impacts of land-use change on dengue distribution in Costa Rica. The project is part of a larger initiative called Disease Ecology in a Changing World (DECO) within the Center for Human and Planetary Health (HPH) at Stanford. My specific project is developing machine learning methods and models that describe land-use changes in Costa Rica from satellite imagery. 

Recently, I had the opportunity to travel to Costa Rica as a part of the research initiative to meet with stakeholders and collaborators on the project. After a full day of meeting and presenting our work, we traveled together to the rural northeast of the country to make a visit to the pineapple plantations and forest areas we have been studying from satellite imagery for the last few years. Seeing the tarps placed over large portions of the fields helped me understand why my model was struggling to find some of the plantations, and my van drive conversations with the collaborators allowed me to draw on their deep experience working in the region to better inform my understanding of the land-use dynamics. The opportunity to travel to the places I am studying from my Python terminal was both motivating and incredibly informative in the ways I hope to approach the future of this work. 

Initiatives like DECO and programs like HPH provide both an opportunity and a responsibility to turn Stanford classroom learning into real world impact and work. Being involved in this project for the last three years has motivated me to engage more deeply with my technical classes as an avenue to have meaningful research impact as an undergrad. More importantly, it has shown me the value of interdisciplinary work and learning, especially when taking more traditional course loads as an undergrad. Bridging the gaps between departments (in this case, CS and Biology) provides both an educational and impact opportunity that is greater than the sum of its parts.