Rebecca Ju ’21 is an incoming PhD candidate at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability

After graduating from Yale, Rebecca Ju ’21 joined a biofuels research group at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where she studied plant-fungal-microbial interactions and belowground carbon dynamics. She then spent three years as a Program Associate at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, helping to develop and manage research grants in fields ranging from marine biodiversity to quantum imaging.

At Yale, Rebecca received the 2021 Gaylord Donnelley Prize for her senior essay, “Developmental Acclimation of Porites astreoides Larvae Enhances Thermal Performance,” advised by Mary Beth Decker. With support from an Environmental Studies Summer Environmental Fellowship, Yale Peabody Museum and Yale Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, she created an animated video that communicated her thesis research in an engaging and accessible format.

“As someone who started Yale without a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I am so grateful to have found the EVST major. In this program, I was able to pursue a wide variety of interests, from creative writing to policy to pure research.”

This fall, Rebecca will begin a PhD in Earth System Science at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability. As a member of Rob Jackson’s lab, she will build on her previous research on belowground carbon dynamics, this time focusing on old-growth forests. More broadly, she hopes to conduct interdisciplinary, solutions-oriented research that connects fundamental science with human systems and decision-making.