It's crunchtime: Writing a thesis on 'Soil Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Soils for Climate Change Mitigation' for my MIT degrees

Source: Spaceship Earth, made by me

My name is Hannah Munguia and I am a graduate researcher at MIT. I am a student in both Technology Policy at the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing and in Aerospace Engineering at the MIT School of Engineering. This is my last semester here and I am in the process of writing my thesis on Soil Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Soils for Climate Change Mitigation.

It's been a tough year, mostly because I've been really physically ill and it really impacts my day to day. For this reason, I've been feeling extremely uninspired and so I am posting here for accountability, inspiration, and to show my progress over this next month before my thesis is due.

I've been really sick for the last three weeks but finally feeling okay. I have a lot to do so it's crunch time for me.

Every day, I am hoping to make a post with what I've done, what I'm working on, what questions I'm asking, and a some general stats to remind you that I'm human.

A little about me

I'd describe my technical background as a tessellation of Earth, satellites, instruments, and mechanical design. Today, I am a researcher in the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment (LAE), advised under Dr. Steven Barrett. At MIT, I previously worked for Dr. Dava Newman, head of the MIT Media Lab, on data visualization and virtual reality under the Human Systems Laboratory (HSL).

Between LAE and HSL, I worked as a temporary full-time employee at NASA JPL working on pre-phase A development for the upcoming Grace III Mission before it was going to be presented to NASA HQ. It was a wonderful break from MIT and I was lucky to have been invited for the position. My now long-time mentor remembered that I cold-emailed him in 2015 as a teenager, interested in getting involved in Grace (my favorite mission).

At the time, the Grace II satellites were being assembled in Germany then so the team offered me an internship position on their new mission, the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover. This was my start in the aerospace world, and I've now interned a total of 5 times at NASA on missions for Mars, Titan, Earth, and Europa.

My formal education is in Environmental Engineering and Earth Science (BS. 2019) at UC San Diego and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I worked at Planet Labs for a year as a mechanical engineer, helping design their new generation of satellites rolling out next year.

I love all things mushrooms, houseplants, my cat Zuzu, my ADHD, disco balls, astrobiology, rocks, (large) mixed-media art, kaleidoscopes, donuts, pretending to be a mechanical or software engineer, technical jargon, and Earth.

On research

The topic of my research is looking at soil carbon sequestration in agricultural soils and how it can be used for climate policy.

I've been working on this research for the past year with no previous experience with the topic. This research is exploratory in nature and it's something that my research lab doesn't have expertise in. Because of this, it's been hard to gauge the progress of work and to make sense of the feedback I receive. (It's academia: there's never a shortage of feedback.)

I believe that my unofficial advisors are trying to get me see how soil carbon sequestration can fit into Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). It's never been explicitly stated, even when I ask, so I could be wrong. However, their background and expertise has been on LCA for Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme for International Aviation (CORSIA) so that seems to be the ultimate goal and the paradigm from which they are reviewing my work.

Most of my work up to joining this lab has been building, creating, and coding; however, this is my first time focusing on policy and doing qualitative research.. and is been the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

Source: Future Biofuel Badge, made by me

On thesis

Although I am a graduate student in two masters programs, I get to write one (extra-long) masters thesis. I do have one advisor that signs off on it since he is the one that funds this research.

I enjoy writing and I will share my writing process here every day and the tools that I use to do my research and make my visualizations.

For now, I will make a list of tools and websites that I use:

Computer Things
Speechify	to listen to papers
Notion	where I do most of my work
Zotero	my reference manager
Chat GPT	to clarify thoughts with
Lumify	to edit pdf's, linked to google drive
Grammarly	to review my writing
XMind	to make mind maps
Biorender	to make visualizations
Kindle	to read books
Google Drive	to hold the papers I read
Desmos	to do quick calculations
Be Focused	my macbook pomodoro
Mathpix	to make Latex easier for me
Figma	to make visualizations

Writing Resources
Null School (link)	for inspiration
Transition words (link)	for reference
Resume Guide (link)	for action words
Academic Phrasebook (link)	for reference

Timeline

Here is a general schedule of this upcoming month:

Thesis Milestone	Allocated Time	Time Before Launch Date	Date
Work on Final Draft	2w	T – 39 days	April 1
Thesis Title Due		T – 29 days	April 11
Research Scientist + Postdoc Review	1w	T – 25 days	April 15
Advisor Review	2w	T – 18 days	April 22
Revision and Edits	1w	T – 5 days	May 6
Thesis Due		T	May 10

Closing notes

So! Much! To! Do!

I am excited to add my favorite papers on soil carbon sequestration on Research Hub since there aren't many out there.

Also, at some point after I submit my thesis: Update my profile on the LAE website

Preprint

Preprint

It's crunchtime: Writing a thesis on 'Soil Carbon Sequestration in Agricultural Soils for Climate Change Mitigation' for my MIT degrees