Audrey Amezcua-Smith

Audrey Amezcua-Smith is a third year PhD student in the Bell Lab at the Yale School of the Environment. She is interested in urban populations’ exposures to air pollution, heat islands, and other climate-relevant environmental outcomes, particularly as they relate to transportation systems and carbon reduction efforts.

Through her YCEJ project, Audrey aims to characterize the effects of the U.S. highway system on urban environmental inequality. Prior to coming to Yale, Audrey worked as an environmental data scientist with a non-profit climate research institute and as a graduate research assistant at the California EPA. Her work has informed policy and advocacy initiatives for equitable decarbonization and air pollution improvement in communities throughout the country, and she hopes her PhD research will do the same. Audrey holds a bachelor’s degree in ecology with a minor in sociology from Rice University and a master’s in environmental health from UC Berkeley.