Sumukhi Prasad
Emeryville, CA| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program |
| Project Title: | Source Apportionment of Mobility-driven Personal Exposures in Mumbai, India |
| Field of Study: | Engineering |
| Home Institution: | At-Large, Emeryville, CA |
| Host Institution: | Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra |
| Grant Start Month: | May 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Six months |
Brief Bio:
Sumukhi Prasad received her BS in environmental engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. There, she conducted research on the intake by minority communities of the primary and secondary particulate matter emitted by the landfills in Los Angeles, California. After winning the Environmental Engineers of the Future (E2F) scholarship, she was funded by a consortium of companies to pursue an MS in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. During her MS, in continuation of her undergraduate research in environmental justice, Sumukhi had the opportunity to draft a public comment for the Union of Concerned Scientists regarding the tightening of National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
While completing her MS coursework, she interned for an environmental engineering firm, CDM Smith, where she supported USAID’s efforts in water and infrastructure rehabilitation in Lebanon. She continued with this project after her MS and worked full time at CDM Smith for a year. Eager to conduct research to address air pollution disparities in the United States, she started her PhD in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Sumukhi’s research at UC Berkeley aims to quantify the spatial and temporal variability in air pollution personal exposure, specifically from the refineries in Martinez, California. She is collaborating with a grassroots advocacy group called Healthy Martinez to hold refineries accountable for air pollution violations in the Martinez community. While her research interests lie at the intersection of air quality, public health, policy, and air pollution exposure monitoring, Sumukhi also has extensive experience in working alongside communities and conducting community-based participatory research.
Sumukhi’s Fulbright-Nehru project is using a novel spatiotemporal personal exposure framework to analyze the emission sources that drive space–time variability in PM2.5 exposures among adults in Mumbai, India. With a collection of GPS locations and measurements, the study is attributing personal exposures to their respective locations using a technique involving density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise. Using the knowledge of Mumbai’s source locations, the aim is to identify the sources that are more fractionally contributing to PM2.5 personal exposures.