Can big data help solve big climate problems?

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Research ideas can come from the unlikeliest of places. Just ask graduate Anna Scott.

Scott was attending a protest in 2015, shortly after Freddie Gray died while in custody of Baltimore police. A young woman was addressing the crowd.

"She said that every single person at the protest could do something to make Baltimore a better place," recalls Scott, a student in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. "She told us that everyone could take their talent or their gifts and do something positive for the city. And I thought, 'Maybe I could do something with my studies on climate science."