STEMJazz Talklet with Erica Walker
Abstract
Erica is in Epidemiology at SPH and has been doing profoundly important work. The trite description is that Erica builds sensor networks for environmental measurements that affect people – especially our most vulnerable people. So yes, she deployed noise sensors all over Boston during COVID. Yes, she also deploys chemical sensors in the deep South from whence she hails (Mississippi) where environmental contaminants “somehow” (insert appropriate emoji here) tend to land in areas with people least able to prevent it. And I could go on and on.
But the key is that while folks like me dive headlong into a gnerdy problem often completely unrelated to the human condition, not only does Erica do work of direct and immediate relevance to people’s lives, she also asks what questions we SHOULD be asking. And once asked, those questions lead to an avalanche of other questions, sometimes even more interesting. Through my information-theoretic lens, Erica’s questions and data are a sort of societal MRI when you consider the where and why of various environmental insults.
As a specific fer-instance, her work in Boston was triggered by a reporter who knew of her general work on noise and asked her about the eerie quiet. Where Erica lived it WAS quiet. But not far away it was not – something she learned from a student fan who just a day later happened to hip her to the racket over in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan (an alarming and consistent spate of firecracker explosions). What were the noise levels? Erica measured them. What effects did those firecrackers have on people – well, Erica measured that too. But even more telling, Erica asked of herself a question: why did she not already KNOW about the firecrackers? Because nobody in her rarefied academic circles thought to ask because they did not live where the firecrackering was happening – a metaphor for her upbringing in Mississipi and thus many parts of the US. And for a gnerd like me, there is an implicit sampling theorem that cuts to the essence of science – WHERE you look matters.
If you’d like to learn a bit more about Erica, here’s a recent article highlighting some of her work. Delightfully, you’ll never hear Erica crowing about the grant itself. Rather, she’ll suggest you check back in 5 years or so when the work is done and has had an effect on people’s lives. That said, I am taking the liberty of crowing just a little here on what is already an impressive corpus of work. :)
In short, Erica Walker is an intellectual warrior for the greater good. I’m so glad she’s with us in the Brown STEMJazz fold.
