What were you doing professionally prior to the CSP program?
Before joining the CSP program, I was working in Japan as a research software engineer at Weathernews, one of the country’s largest weather forecasting companies. Most of my time was spent building machine learning models to predict industry demand based on the forecast. I also worked on tweaking the “nowcasting” system, basically improving our short-term (1–4 hour) rain predictions from radar data.

Why did you decide to apply to the CSP program?
I keep noticing more and more extreme weather events happening all over the world, and I couldn’t help wondering just how much worse it’s going to get. It made me realize I need to do something. Most people know about climate change, but they don’t really understand how seriously it’s going to affect them. That’s why I wanted to get into the science behind it—so I can find ways to help fix the problem or at least soften its impact and get people ready for what’s coming. My background is in software engineering, though, so I was missing some of the climate science knowledge and policy expertise I’d need to really make a difference.

What has your career path looked like following the program?
After finishing the program, I joined a startup called Four Twenty Seven, a research-based climate risk analytics company that really pushed the boundaries of asset-level climate risk assessment. I got the chance to dive deep into climate risk modeling and worked on projects covering everything from flood and sea-level rise to heat stress risk scoring. It was exciting to see how the financial world started integrating climate risk into their decision-making—it’s practically mainstream now. These days, I’m still working in climate risk, but I’ve shifted toward modeling the financial impacts. I’m putting actual dollar values on climate risks so individuals and companies can understand the costs and invest smarter in adaptation.

What skills or knowledge did you gain from the program that you use most often in your career?
Climate science is definitely the main skill I use every day, along with the spatial data science techniques I picked up from an elective course. These allow me to model climate risks and visualize them on the map so people can really see how climate change might affect them. I also gained valuable insights from other parts of the program, like the policy-making processes course, which introduced me to the world of policy—something I might never have explored if I hadn’t joined this program.

Were there any specific courses or projects you completed during your time at Scripps that significantly impacted your career path?
In my capstone project, I built a simple model to explore the potential of flexible transit in San Diego and estimate how much it could reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The model used SANDAG data, which represents the travel patterns of everyone in the region, so it was a massive, city-wide project—something I’d never tackled before. That experience really broadened my perspective and taught me that if you put in the effort, you can learn how to do just about anything and achieve meaningful results. It also showed me that we all have the power to make a positive impact on society and contribute to tackling climate change, no matter the scale.