#SoCaltech: Chris Yeh
"When I was young, I really enjoyed the outdoors—hiking, rock climbing, spending time in Yosemite with my family. One thing I learned really quickly was the importance of ‘leave no trace’—essentially, leaving the place better than you found it. When I was young, I didn't really know what the word sustainability meant, but I was already learning about it through my experience in the outdoors. …
“Here at Caltech, the question that I've been fascinated with is whether we could use AI—this extremely powerful technology that is literally everywhere—to tackle the most pressing sustainability challenges. I started noticing a lot of different ways that AI was being used and developed for sustainability applications. For example, for reducing food waste in grocery stores: If you can better predict how much produce someone's going to buy, you can stock the grocery store accordingly to make sure there's no food waste. AI for reducing global hunger: Trying to estimate crop yields and then provide insight to farmers so they can better optimize their planting and growing of crops to produce more food. Smart EV chargers using AI so that they can intelligently charge the cars when there's solar and wind and clean energy as opposed to when there's more polluting electricity on the grid.
“Managing uncertainty is really a fundamental challenge across sustainability problems. … And that has been the core of my research."
Chris Yeh is a postdoctoral scholar research associate in computing and mathematical sciences whose research sits at the intersection of AI and sustainability. He builds algorithms that help AI systems reason about uncertainty in their own predictions, making them reliable enough to tackle real-world challenges like optimizing clean energy grids, mapping global poverty, and protecting endangered species. In April, as part of the Science Journeys series, he presented the talk, “Smarter AI for a More Sustainable World: Building an AI Model You Can Trust.”
#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.