Energy touches every corner of the globe, and Dartmouth students from across disciplines are increasingly taking their coursework into the field to understand it. Last year, with support from the Irving Institute's Student Grant program, Dartmouth students went looking for the gaps in our current energy systems, and the opportunities inside them, paddling remote rivers in Southeast Asia, mapping oil fields in Los Angeles, and building predictive models for nuclear power and home energy efficiency.
Their work spanned continents and disciplines, but each asked a version of the same question: how do we build energy systems that are cleaner, and also affordable and equitable for the communities living alongside them?
Paddling the Mekong: The Downstream Impacts of Energy Infrastructure
In December 2025, during Winterim, Evan Lai '26 (economics and psychology double-major), Brandon Zhao '26 (engineering major), and Erica Mao ‘28 (quantitative social science major) set off on a multi-day journey through China, Laos, and Vietnam to investigate the impacts of hydroelectric dams in the Mekong Basin.
Photo courtesy of Evan Lai.
The group traveled the Nam Ou River by canoe, stopping in Nong Khiaw and Sop Chien before reaching Luang Prabang, and witnessing firsthand how the dams have reshaped both the landscape and daily life. "The damming has significantly altered the natural flow of the river, which has disrupted local infrastructure and traditional ways of life," Lai noted.
In Ban Tha Khen, a small fishing village, residents told the students that the fish population has decreased due to the dams. Families who once subsisted entirely on fishing now raise chickens, farm, and charge fees to transport goods upriver from the dam instead. Three dams along the tributary also turned once-simple river travel into a logistical challenge.
"The three dams also make transportation much harder for the local population, as now they need to portage across dams with land vehicles, and upstream travel is made much more difficult by the fast rapid water that results from damming," Zhao explained.
Photo courtesy of Brandon Zhao.
Finishing their trip, the group flew to Ho Chi Minh City to see the Mekong Delta and how the river system ultimately culminates. Their final takeaway pointed to a clear tension between who decides how a river gets developed, and who bears the impacts.
"Downstream communities bear the consequences of upstream development decisions, with livelihoods dependent on river health increasingly threatened by altered hydrology beyond their control," Lai remarked.
A Year of Impact, by the Numbers
During the 2025–2026 academic year, the Irving Institute awarded $136,900 in Student Grant funding, supporting 35 Dartmouth students pursuing unpaid internships, independent research, and professional and educational growth opportunities.
Over the summer and fall of 2025, students hand-crafted wind turbines in the Andes, built solar cells at a national lab, and modeled critical materials supply chains. Over the winter and spring of 2026, they examined the impacts of hydroelectric power, studied the public health and environmental justice implications of oil drilling, modeled energy efficiency and nuclear energy deployment scenarios, and learned the day-to-day workings of a renewable energy business.
Planning a Just Transition Away from Urban Oil Drilling
While one group traveled abroad, history and environmental studies double-major Harper Richardson '27 looked closer to home, researching how Los Angeles can responsibly phase out urban oil drilling and reinvest that land in the communities around it.
Through an internship with the Community & Environmental Justice Research Lab at UC Irvine and the LAS VOCES project (Los Angeles Voices on Oil, Community, Environment, and Salud), Richardson contributed to community-based research on the environmental and health impacts of oil drilling near residential neighborhoods.
After studying the city’s archives and U.S. Census Bureau data, Richardson developed an analysis of her findings. "I painted a picture of the land-use history, land owners, neighborhood transformation, and perception of land shifting to extractive use,” she explained.
Photo courtesy of Harper Richardson.
Richardson also helped develop recommendations for phasing out oil drilling sites across Los Angeles, focusing especially on how communities can reclaim land when sites close, and what an environmentally just decommissioning process looks like in practice.
"I came to the understanding that in order for communities to gain justice from environmental harm, they need more durable pathways to land ownership," Richardson said. "While there is no silver bullet, and the burden is on the community organizers to meet these key needs, options are emerging in justice organizing examples across the nation."
Modeling Energy Efficiency for Better Affordability
Data modeling is another powerful tool that informs our understanding of energy system impacts and solutions. Camry Gach ‘27, an engineering sciences major, used building energy models to better understand the issues that low-income households in New Hampshire face in heating and cooling their homes.
Working with postdoctoral fellow Dr. Lynée Turek-Hankins, Gach learned to run energy simulation software and process data from a synthetic building stock database — a system built on real household data — to generate results that help illuminate how households make energy-related decisions.
Photo courtesy of Camry Gach.
"Combined, these programs allow me to simulate the energy consumption, bill spending, and indoor temperatures of multiple representative low-income households in New Hampshire," Gach explained.
Gach presented her findings to members of the Keller Lab, drawing on 2024 Census Household Pulse Survey data showing that roughly 41% of low-income households in NH forgo basic living necessities to pay for energy.
Ultimately, this kind of data modeling gives policymakers and program designers exactly what they need to close the gap — a clear, data-driven picture of which households to target with efficiency upgrades and cost-offsetting programs.
Running the Numbers on Nuclear's Next Chapter
Modeling is also helpful in forecasting large-scale energy transitions. Anna Roodnitsky '26, an economics and environmental studies double-major, set out to study nuclear technology deployment and ended up learning just how tightly technology, timing, and policy are intertwined.
Working with Thayer School of Engineering faculty member Steven Peterson, Roodnitsky built a system dynamics model examining nuclear energy deployment, focusing on small modular reactors, industry learning curves, and the surging electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence.
"The project gave me the opportunity to move beyond simply learning about energy transitions in theory and instead actively engage with the process of building and analyzing models that attempt to capture real-world dynamics," Roodnitsky shared. "Professor Peterson also emphasized the importance of connecting technical modeling choices to broader policy and economic questions, which helped me develop a more interdisciplinary perspective on energy transitions."
Photo courtesy of Anna Roodnisky.
As her models grew more sophisticated, Roodnitsky layered in cost comparisons, factory build-out constraints, AI- and data-center-driven demand growth, and investment allocation dynamics.
"The process required constant iteration and debugging, but it also demonstrated how sensitive large-scale energy transitions are to assumptions regarding costs, deployment rates, and policy incentives," Roodnitsky said.
The project culminated in a poster presentation and a long-form research paper.
"Presenting the work also gave me confidence in discussing energy systems research," Roodnitsky reflected. "Overall, this experience strengthened both my technical and analytical skills while deepening my interest in energy systems, environmental economics, and the role of modeling in informing long-term policy decisions."
Communicating the Business of Clean Energy
For some students, the energy transition looked less like research and more like running a business. Environmental studies major Mikhaila Hurley '26 spent her internship with residential solar company Solaflect Energy learning what it takes to run a renewable energy company day to day, working with sales databases, producing client-facing posters and demo videos, and building website mock-ups.
Photo courtesy of Mikhaila Hurley.
"I feel a lot more well-versed in the business side of renewable energy, and how renewables end up looking in a practical setting outside of academic papers and projects I've had in environmental studies classes at Dartmouth," Hurley said.
Hurley also traced how changing state and federal policy shaped Solaflect's marketing, including a shift in client focus from the eastern to the western U.S.
"Coming from a predominantly policy-and-governance-focused professional background, it was relevant to me to gain more marketing and outreach experience and to see how governance and policy decisions manifest across the country in terms of what products are designed and which ones remain viable in an ever-changing policy sphere," Hurley noted.
Supporting Solutions
From a canoe on the Nam Ou River to a nuclear energy model on a laptop screen, this year's grant recipients show just how many angles there are to work from, and how much progress is possible when good data, careful research, and community insight come together.
As they identify both gaps and solutions, Dartmouth students continue to demonstrate that the energy transition isn’t just a process to document — it’s an evolution they are actively helping to accelerate and get right.
The Irving Institute supports Dartmouth students in their pursuit of education and impact on the energy transition.
2026-2027 Application Deadlines
- Winter term: Wednesday, October 14, 2026
- Spring term: Wednesday, February 3, 2027
- Summer term: Wednesday, April 28, 2027
