TT032 – Research for Water Equity (Part 1)

Research engineers like Kelsey Pieper get to work at the interface between knowledge discovery and real world application. In this first of two conversations with Dr. Pieper we explore some of the challenges of improving access to safe water, particularly for private well users. This episode highlights how both social understanding and real data are needed to design equitable solutions.

Topics Discussed

“My team thinks a lot about how we engineer things by who we are, but we have to understand who other people are in order to design a solution for them.”

Kelsey Pieper

Go Further

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About the Guest

Kelsey Pieper is an assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering and affiliated faculty in the School of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University. She is a 2021 National Academies Gulf Research Program’s Early-Career Research Fellow. Her research focuses on characterizing drinking water quality in underserved communities in the United States. She received her Ph.D. degree in Biological Systems Engineering and M.S. degree in Civil Engineering at Virginia Tech, and B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering at Binghamton University.