Summer Job Diaries: Margaret Saunders MPP ’26 From the Classroom to NASA: A Summer at the Intersection of Data, Policy, and the Planet

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Margaret Saunders, a Master of Public Policy student at UCLA Luskin, spent her summer with NASA’s DEVELOP program researching how California’s redwood forests are impacted by and recover from wildfires, using Earth observation data to inform environmental understanding and policy.

What organization or agency are you working with this summer, and what are your primary responsibilities day‑to‑day?  

This summer, I participated in the NASA DEVELOP program. DEVELOP is part of NASA’s Earth Sciences Division’s Earth Action program and works with participants and partner organizations to address important environmental issues using NASA Earth Observations. Throughout the course of 10 weeks, our team has been working remotely to conduct a research project which assesses how redwood forests are impacted by wildfires in Santa Cruz, California and investigate how they recover after fires. Day to day, myself and my team are using Earth observations to investigate this issue and creating science communications to explain our findings!

Which Luskin course, concept, or skill have you found yourself using the most so far—or what public policy concepts and theories have you seen up close and personal?  

During my first year in the Luskin Public Policy program, I learned how to use RStudio for policy-related work. Seeing how this is used for Earth Observations has reinforced how vital this tool is for addressing a range of environmental concerns. Working with partner organizations has been particularly valuable, as it has given me in-depth insight into the impact of fires on redwood forests, people, and the economy—crucial issues for policy.

How has this experience shaped your career goals or next steps at Luskin? Any advice for peers seeking similar internships or research opportunities?  

This experience has had a huge impact on my career goals. It has always been important to me to pursue work that makes a difference to people and the planet, and seeing the impact DEVELOP projects can have on real organizations and communities has reinforced that goal. From a skills perspective, experiencing the technical side of this work has shown me a new way to achieve this goal and the program has built my skillset massively. For anyone who is passionate about environmental change and wants to expand their skillset my advice is to seek and say yes to opportunities that challenge you and expose you to new environmental concerns because that is where the most growth happens. Every new experience expands both your skills and your network which helps you to develop personally and professionally!

How has working on Earth science and geospatial projects with NASA DEVELOP shaped your perspective on the role of data in driving policy decisions, and has it influenced your future career goals?

Data is vital for policy decisions. While NASA DEVELOP doesn’t prescribe policy, working on this project has shown me how using data to highlight issues can provide important guidance for decision-making. In particular, data and maps are a great tool for visualizing a problem or providing a holistic yet detailed view of a situation. In a policy context, data makes the background for policy issues accessible for a range of people across different fields and areas of expertise which is important for making decisions that support all relevant stakeholders!

Rising Temperatures Cause Students to Underperform Across the World UCLA’s Edith de Guzman highlights how overheated classrooms are widening educational inequities.

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An article published in the Los Angeles Times quotes Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, highlighting how rising temperatures are undermining students’ ability to learn—particularly in underserved communities. A comprehensive review, analyzing data from 14.5 million students across 61 countries, found that heat exposure reduces cognitive performance, especially in complex subjects like math. Even moderately warm days, between 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, impair students’ attention, memory, and focus.

Heat doesn’t affect all students equally. Black, Latino, and low-income students experience up to three to four times more learning loss from heat exposure compared to white and affluent peers. This disparity is largely due to inequalities in infrastructure—many under-resourced schools lack adequate air conditioning, shade, or green space, making classrooms unbearably hot during warmer months.

“As classroom temperatures rise over time — especially during extended heat waves or in schools with less shade, poorer insulation and lacking access to air conditioning — students tend to show declines in attention, memory and test performance,” said Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation. Heat can also affect students’ abilities to enjoy outdoor recreational activities, having serious effects on their physical, mental and social well-being, she said.

The study also found that these effects are cumulative, with heat exposure throughout the school year having a greater impact on learning than just exam-day temperatures. Simple solutions—such as air conditioning, improved ventilation, and increasing tree canopy around schools—can dramatically reduce heat-related learning loss. However, many schools lack the funding to implement these upgrades.

Indonesia’s Democratization at a Crossroads: BGI Report Highlights Rising Challenges Despite robust economic gains and improved public goods provision, Indonesia faces mounting hurdles in governance.

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The newest BGI report reveals striking insights for Indonesia, which faces complex governance dynamics as an archipelagic state and the country with the largest global Muslim population. Achieving full democratization proves a challenge for Indonesia, with the BGI report revealing a decline in democratic accountability. State capacity measures appear to remain stagnant, despite the country experiencing significant economic growth. However, this trend is not uncommon to its Southeast Asian neighbors- illustrating that Indonesia must continue to invest its economic gains in state capacity. Public goods provision has significantly increased, but the country’s complex regional governance system may prove a challenge to maintaining these gains. As Indonesia accelerates its development, it must face these challenges head-on– struggles which have been amplified due to authoritarian tendencies, crippling regional inequality, geopolitical challenges, and struggles with trade diversification as it emerges as a leader on the global stage.

Read the full report here.

Underpaying and Overusing Our Roads: The True Cost of Driving UCLA Luskin’s Mike Manville is challenging how we think about traffic, housing, and fairness.

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If you’ve ever been stuck in gridlock traffic on the 405 or circled the block looking for parking in L.A., you’ve experienced the kinds of problems Michael Manville has spent years researching and trying to solve. As professor and chair of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Manville is reshaping how we think about transportation and housing in a sprawling city like Los Angeles and turning his research into real-world impact.

At the center of Manville’s transportation research is a deceptively simple idea: the way we price things matters and how we price things shapes how we use them.

” Driving costs less than it should, because the full social costs of driving, like congestion, pollution, infrastructure wear, aren’t reflected in what we pay to use our roads.”

“Driving is too cheap, and housing is too expensive,” he says. “Driving isn’t cheap in the absolute sense of the word ‘cheap’ because cars aren’t cheap and gas isn’t free, but in the sense that it costs less than it should, because the full social costs of driving, like congestion, pollution, infrastructure wear, aren’t reflected in what we pay to use our roads.” The price of housing, meanwhile, is driven up by restrictive land-use policies that limit supply.

Manville’s first introduction into urban planning began in a newsroom while covering transportation and housing topics as a local reporter. When the newspaper he worked for went bankrupt, he joined the local planning commission. Eager to turn his newfound passion into a career, he enrolled in the urban planning master’s degree program at UCLA and after a summer as a research assistant, decided to pursue a Ph.D. Today, he leads the department that jumpstarted his second career.

Building on the groundbreaking work of his mentor Donald Shoup, former UCLA urban planning professor and pioneer in parking reform who famously argued that free or underpriced parking distorts urban development, Manville and many other experts in the field have expanded this logic more broadly, emphasizing that it’s not just parking that’s mispriced, it’s also the roads themselves.

One proven strategy to address this is congestion pricing, a transportation policy that charges drivers a fee to use certain roads during peak traffic times. A controversial idea that has gained some traction in recent years, the goal primarily is to improve traffic flow and lower pollution, although it can also generate revenue for public transit and infrastructure.

It’s the idea that using roads during peak times should come with a price, just like electricity or water. “We meter every other government-owned utility,” Manville explains, “but not roads.” “It’s the only system that we don’t charge prices for, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s the only system that colossally breaks down about two times a day.” Manville argues that the same basic principle we apply to everything else in our economy, pricing goods and services based on demand, should also apply to road usage.

“We meter every other government-owned utility, but not our roads. It’s the only system that we don’t charge prices for, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s the only system that colossally breaks down about two times a day.”

Cities like Singapore prove it can work. In Singapore, dynamic tolling keeps traffic flowing at 45–55 mph even in a city as densely populated as San Francisco. Manville argues that Los Angeles could reap similar benefits if it embraced the idea. “We’ve normalized the dysfunction of our transportation system,” he says. “But there’s nothing inherently fair about free roads, or unfair about charging for their use.”

For Manville, reimagining cities isn’t just about policy; it’s about turning research into practical, real-world implementation. At UCLA Luskin, he says, that happens through teaching the next generation of planners, working directly with policymakers, and ensuring research is more accessible to community members. “The biggest impact we can have,” he explains, “is making sure our students leave with the ability to weigh tradeoffs—not chase perfect solutions.”

When asked what he hopes for the next generation of urban planners who will be tasked to solve some of the most complicated issues our cities face today, Manville had some wisdom from his own experience as a young planner.

“I came to UCLA convinced there were a bunch of right answers,” he reflects. “But the biggest lesson I’ve learned, and hope to pass on, is that progress comes from understanding the nuance and complexity of the issues we hope to solve. In a city as vast and diverse as L.A., differing perspectives are inevitable and real change begins with listening, especially to those you may not agree with.”

D.C. Tops L.A. for Worst Traffic in the U.S. in New Report Mike Manville explains how traffic congestion signals economic growth and how unregulated road access worsens it.

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According to a new MSN report based on Consumer Affairs data, Washington, D.C. now ranks as the city with the worst traffic in the U.S., overtaking Los Angeles.The average commute time in D.C. is 33.4 minutes, edging out L.A., which now holds the No. 2 spot. While Los Angeles still leads in total weekday congestion hours (7 hours and 51 minutes), D.C. follows closely with 6 hours and 35 minutes.

Experts suggest that increased congestion may indicate a thriving economy. Professor and chair of the urban planning department Michael Manville explains that areas with economic opportunity attract more residents, and keeps current residents because of opportunities.

“Because we don’t do anything to regulate access, the roads in an area with a booming economy become overloaded and congested,” Manville added.

The exact causes of D.C.’s worsening traffic remain uncertain but could include a return to office mandates under recent federal policies. In contrast, cities with the least traffic include Rochester, Salt Lake City, Cleveland, Hartford, and St. Louis.

Rebuilding for Resilience: Minjee Kim on Post-Fire Urban Planning In the Building Better Cities podcast, Minjee Kim discusses how the aftermath of L.A.’s wildfires presents a chance to reimagine recovery—through sustainable, equitable, and long-term urban planning.

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Dr. Minjee Kim, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, was featured on the Building Better Cities podcast in the episode titled “Who Rebuilds LA? Planning Post-Fire Recovery with Dr. Minjee Kim.” In the wake of the devastating LA wildfires, Kim presents this disaster as an opportunity to rethink how cities rebuild with long-term resiliency in mind. “The L.A. fires presented the opportunity to think large scale,” she says. “I see the Los Angeles fires that happened as an opportunity to think about urban planning and development in the long term… in terms of resiliency and fire resiliency, but also in terms of what is a good sustainable form of urban development.”

In conversation with host Kate Gasparro, Kim discusses how post-disaster recovery can serve as a launchpad for long-term, equitable urban planning—if supported by the right governance structures. Drawing from her research and experience advising the L.A. County Blue Ribbon Commission on post-fire recovery, she explores potential models for regional redevelopment agencies, citing examples from San Francisco, New York City, and Cincinnati.

Minjee Kim Weighs In on the Rise of Gated Communities in the U.S. In a recent CNBC feature, Prof. Kim weighs on the growing rise of popularity in gated communities across America.

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Dr. Minjee Kim, assistant professor of urban planning, was featured in CNBC’s “Why Americans Keep Moving Into Gated Communities,” which aired on July 18. The segment explores the growing trend of Americans choosing to live behind gates and walls, driven largely by a desire for safety, stability, and control in uncertain times.

Kim highlights that gated communities are often marketed not just as secure, but as exclusive and desirable. “The whole point of creating HOAs and possibly gating, is to create that location premium,” she explains. “You are essentially creating this marketing that this place is a desirable place to live. You’re paying a premium to live in a homogenous environment.”

While residents may be drawn by the promise of safety and order, the broader societal impacts are more complex. Gated communities can deepen economic and racial segregation, divert resources away from public infrastructure, and contribute to social fragmentation by isolating residents from the wider civic community.

Watch the full feature here. 

UCLA teams up with USC and civic partners to cool the Los Angeles region ShadeLA aims to expand urban tree canopy and shade infrastructure, building heat resilience for Angelenos

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Los Angeles faces a growing challenge: heat. Record-breaking temperatures, combined with inadequate shade, are making it harder to walk to school, wait for a bus or play sports. Today, ShadeLA launches as a public campaign to raise awareness, spur action and create collaborations that will work to expand tree canopy and shade infrastructure while leaving a safer, more climate-resilient Los Angeles.

ShadeLA is led by USC Dornsife Public Exchange in collaboration with UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, with participation by the city of Los Angeles, the county’s Chief Sustainability Office, LA Metro and the Los Angeles Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, or LA28. The world will be watching Los Angeles over the next three years as the region hosts global sporting events like the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl LXI, culminating with the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. ShadeLA plans to leverage this unique window of attention and investments to expand access to shade around communities that need it most, as well as Olympic venue sites and other shade deserts — areas lacking adequate shade — in Los Angeles’ most heat-vulnerable neighborhoods.

ShadeLA is structured around four goals, each rooted in research, policy and community engagement:

  1. Expand shade through design competitions, new shade concepts and pilot projects
  2. Preserve and maintain shade through tree maintenance toolkits and stewardship models
  3. Guide the placement of new infrastructure using shade mapping, planning and other tools
  4. Inform and mobilize people through community shade planning events, story campaigns and toolkits for residents, businesses and schools

“ShadeLA is a powerful example of how UCLA research and collaborations lead to real-world impact,” said UCLA Chancellor Julio Frenk. “This project will greatly benefit communities across Los Angeles — and with the eyes of the world turning to our city in the lead-up to 2028, we have a unique opportunity to showcase what inclusive climate action can achieve.”

The campaign is powered by a growing list of community collaborators leading on-the-ground shade projects that help ensure solutions are locally driven and responsive to neighborhood priorities.

“For years, USC Dornsife Public Exchange has been leading the way on sustainable urban forestry. Now, we’re proud to be spearheading ShadeLA, an important initiative that leverages our cutting-edge research to improve quality of life for all of us in Los Angeles,” USC interim President Beong-Soo Kim said.

Heat is the largest weather-related killer facing Los Angeles, especially its vulnerable populations. A key solution: shade. It is one of the most effective, low-cost ways to reduce heat risk. Whether from a tree, canopy, awning or bus shelter, shaded areas can drop the “feels-like” temperature by 35 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit (or 20 to 40 degrees Celsius). It is simple, scalable and can be integrated into everyday spaces where people live, learn, work and play.

Los Angeles County has less shade than the national average. Urbanized areas of the county have an average of 21% shade at noon compared with the national average of 27%, according to the Luskin Center for Innovation’s national Shade Map, which is part of American Forests’ Tree Equity Score.

“We’re at a critical juncture as L.A. gets hotter, and we are thrilled to partner with USC to lead with evidence and to collectively envision a livable future for our region,” said Edith de Guzman, water and adaptation policy cooperative extension specialist at the Luskin Center for Innovation.

“ShadeLA is about more than trees and structures — it’s about people,” said Monica Dean, climate and sustainability practice director at USC Dornsife Public Exchange. “This campaign addresses heat not just as an environmental issue, but as a public health, infrastructure and community challenge.”

LA28 has pledged to weave shade planning and heat mitigation measures into its planning processes.

“LA28 is committed to incorporating sustainable solutions throughout the Games footprint,” said Becky Dale, vice president of sustainability at LA28. “ShadeLA supports not only keeping spectators cool during the Games, but also leaving a legacy of a cooler, greener Los Angeles for all Angelenos.”

By expanding shade in coordination with local communities, USC and UCLA aim to model collaborative climate action while creating safer, healthier public spaces for decades to come.

The article was originally published on UCLA Newsroom. Read the full article here.

Beyond shade: UCLA researchers improve radiant cooling to make outdoor temperatures feel cooler Approach uses low-cost, scalable, transparent and infrared-reflective surfaces and hydronic panels

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A team of UCLA engineers and researchers has developed a new technique to make it feel up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler outside while preserving a sense of safe and open space.

Nature Sustainability magazine shows thermal imaging of a person sitting in a folding chair inside a radiant cooling structure

Recently featured as the June cover story in Nature Sustainability, the UCLA-led study demonstrated a new way to harness radiant cooling. Instead of relying on dark and windowless spaces, such as a tunnel, to create radiant cooling that raises safety concerns for public outdoor spaces, the new approach combines water-cooled aluminum panels and see-through, infrared-reflective thin polymer film, which allows both efficient cooling and visibility — a top priority, especially for residents in urban communities.

As climate change accelerates, extreme heat events are occurring with greater intensity and frequency, threatening the safety of people who spend significant time outdoors. Active radiant cooling, which uses surrounding surfaces such as cool roofs or floors to absorb heat from a space, has recently emerged as a promising strategy for outdoor thermal comfort, as it offers cooling at a distance without the inefficiency of conditioning unconfined air. However, for radiant cooling structures to be effective, the overwhelming majority of their internal surfaces must be actively cooled, typically with opaque panels, raising practicality and safety concerns. The UCLA team found a way to address these issues.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge’s Heat Resilient LA project.

“This low-cost and scalable design is a practical step beyond shade to help people who have to be outdoors on hot days, especially during periods of extreme heat,” said study co-author Aaswath Raman, an associate professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering who specializes in developing new materials and technologies to help lower temperatures. “This additional level of cooling can bring some relief in outdoor places where traditional air conditioning simply isn’t possible, such as metro stops, parks and plazas.”

In field studies, the researchers conducted experiments on the UCLA campus and at the San Fernando Swap Meet on days when temperatures reached the mid-80s at each location. The team constructed a nearly 10-by-10-foot “tent,” comprising semi-transparent, infrared-reflective walls made of half-metallized thin polymer film; a roof built from radiative-cooling sheets; and three hydronic radiant-cooling panels made of aluminum sheets with cold water flowing behind them to keep the panels actively cool. To enhance cooling efficiency, the team also painted the inward-facing side of the panels black to absorb incidental heat, such as body heat from people within the structure. The semi-transparent walls allow occupants to see outside without visual obstruction.

Interior and exterior of a tent structure with three hydronic radiant-cooling aluminum panels and polymer film walls

Raman Lab/UCLA
The interior and exterior of the nearly 10-by-10-foot “tent.”

The researchers found that their structure had a mean radiant temperature of about 78 degrees Fahrenheit. This was not only lower than the ambient air temperature of approximately 84 degrees but also more than 10 degrees cooler than the mean radiant temperature of about 90 degrees that a person would have otherwise experienced due to heat radiating from surrounding surfaces. The team also surveyed participants who stood in the cooling structure, with most reporting feeling cooler and more comfortable than they would in shade alone.

“Radiant temperature” refers to a commonly experienced phenomenon: when a person’s perceived temperature differs from the actual air temperature. For example, when someone walks from an asphalt-paved parking lot to a grassy area, then to a space under a tree, the air temperature stays the same, but it feels cooler because the grass and shade shield the person from heat radiated by surrounding surfaces, such as asphalt. This effect helped inspire the researchers’ new approach to tackling heat.

“Cities need to think about shade as infrastructure,” said study co-author V. Kelly Turner, a UCLA associate professor of urban planning and geography and associate director of the Luskin Center for Innovation who studies heat equity. “This accessible design can help patch in where there is not enough shade for people to be comfortable outdoors on hot days.”

The paper’s lead author is David Abraham, a doctoral student in Raman’s research group at UCLA Samueli. Other authors include Dr. Mackensie Yore, an emergency medicine physician at UCLA Health; Kirsten Schwarz, an associate professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; Dr. David Eisenman, a professor-in-residence at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA with a joint appointment at Fielding School; and Walker Wells, an urban planning lecturer at the Luskin School. Other authors from Raman’s group are undergraduate student Robert Yang, former graduate student Xin Huang and former postdoctoral scholar Jyotirmoy Mandal.

This article was originally published on UCLA Newsroom. Read the full article here.