MY MISSION

My name is Cielo Angelica Sharkus and I am a climate engineer who focuses on evaluating the impacts of climate change on the regional and local scale. I am an NSF Research trainee at the Energy Transition Institute of UMass Amherst, a Northeast Climate Adaptation Science Center Fellow, an American Water Works Scholar, and I am also the founder of HOPE: which stands for Humans for the Opposition of Pollution and Emissions, a non-profit that is centered around climate engineering in New England.

My mission is to dissect and disentangle the multifaceted and intersecting impacts of climate change on critical city infrastructure, watersheds, renewable energy, and personal property. As a climate engineer, I monitor trends of severe weather, hurricanes, droughts, wildfire, and flooding and use big data to predict the future occurrence of climate disasters. I also use computational methods to evaluate the invisible impacts of climate change, such as mobilization of legacy contaminants and sedimentation on power facilities. Most importantly, I use my expertise to evaluate the impact that environmental detriments have on historically underserved populations.

Climate change affects us all in different ways, but what if it could teach us how to adapt and prepare our communities better? We could have safer cities, cleaner water, and longer power generation that could last centuries as we adapt and change.

This is the focus of my work in the Northeastern United States. My PhD dissertation, which is titled "Climate Engineering: Past and Future Risks of Climate Change", is aimed at understanding how the range of climate detriments, pollutants, and extreme weather will impact the historic Connecticut River watershed with a focus on hydropower facilities, farming, and water quality. The anticipated completion is summer 2023.