Garima Raheja

Garima Raheja (she/hers) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia University and the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, and is concurrently working at The White House on decarbonizing the US energy supply. She holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a BA in Data Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

Garima’s work is focused on using low-cost sensor networks and novel data science techniques to understand air pollution, environmental justice and health impacts in urban regions across the United States and the Global South. Additionally, Garima is leading the development of methods and best practices for community- and citizen-based science production, and creating pathways and training about environmental justice for graduate and undergraduate students in universities around the world. Informed by her childhood in New Delhi, India and with backgrounds in youth community organizing and technical air quality analysis, Garima brings culturally-informed, science-based decision making to pressing environmental and policy discussions.

 

Garima currently serves as the US State Department Air Quality Fellow, Bay Area Air Quality Management District Advisory Councilmember, American Geophysical Union Community Science Fellow, and the AGU Art and Science Section Lead. Previously, Garima has worked with NASA, NOAA, the University of Washington, the University of Hawaii, UC San Diego, the Exploratorium Science Museum, Code for America, Maui Nui Botanical Gardens, and led 100+ consultants in the Bay Area Environmentally Aware Consulting Network on 20+ social and environmental responsibility projects. Garima is a recipient of the prestigious Columbia University Dean’s Fellowship, the UC Berkeley Regents’ and Chancellors’ Scholarship, the Koret Research Scholarship, and a four-time recipient of the Cal Berkeley Alumni Leadership Award. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, CNN, ABC, NBC, CityLimits, and the MIT Technology Review. You can follow her on Twitter at @rahejagarima or check out her website.

 

  1. (in review) Hèzouwè Sonla , Kokou Sabi , Raheja, G., et al (2022). Daily PM2.5 concentrations levels at Agoè-Minamadou in the city of Lomé, Togo. Clean Air Journal.

  2. Raheja, G., et al (2022). Low-Cost Sensor Performance Intercomparison, Correction Factor Development, and 2+ Years of Ambient PM2.5 monitoring in Accra, Ghana. Environmental Science & Technology. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c09264.

  3. Bonilla, E., Mickley, L., Raheja, G., et al (2022). Health impacts of smoke exposure in South America: increased risk for populations in the Amazonian Indigenous territories". Environmental Research Health. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2752-5309/acb22b. (top 5% of all research tracked by Altmetric)

  4. Raheja, G. et al. (2022). Community-Based Participatory Research for Low-Cost Air Pollution Monitoring in the Wake of Unconventional Oil and Gas Development in the Ohio River Valley - Empowering Impacted Residents through Community Science. Environmental Research Letters. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac6ad6 (media coverage) (top 5% of all research tracked by Altmetric)

  5. Raheja, G. et al. (2022). Two Years of Field-Calibrated Low-Cost Sensor Measurements of PM2.5 in Lomé, Togo. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.1c00391. (top 5% of all research tracked by Altmetric)

  6. Jeanty, Julia and Raheja, G. (2021). A Breath of Fresh Air: Policies for Comprehensive Asthma Mitigation in New York State. Data For Progress. Retrieved from https://www.filesforprogress.org/memos/policies_for_comprehensive_asthma_mitigation_in_new_york_state.pdf

  7. Raheja, G., Goodkind, A., Tessum, C., Coggins, J., Hill, J., & Marshall, J. (2020, June 7). Census demographic data for the InMAP Source-Receptor Matrix (ISRM) dataset. Zenodo. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3884115. 

  8. McFarlane, C., Raheja, G., Malings, C., Appoh, E. K., Hughes, A. F., & Westervelt, D. M. (2021). Application of gaussian mixture regression for the correction of low cost PM2.5 Monitoring Data in Accra, Ghana. ACS Earth and Space Chemistry, 5(9), 2268–2279. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsearthspacechem.1c00217 

  9. Raheja, G, et al. "The Steaks Are High! Methane on the Rise." IEEE Earthzine, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 11 Aug. 2016, earthzine.org/the-steaks-are-high-methane-on-the-rise/.