WORCESTER, Mass. - A trio of students from Worcester Polytechnic Institute will be attending one of the world's largest climate change conferences this week.
Jonathan Chang, Wilson Gramer and Kenza Bezzat will be among the 70,000 people in Dubai at the U.N. climate conference. The gathering is described as the world's only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change. The ultimate goal is to advance decisions on how to address the issue and will have representation from nearly every country in the world.
The three students will be delegates and attend sessions focused on climate action.
"I think one of the things I’m looking forward to is, coming from an island myself, a developing country, I’m very interested to see how developing countries are represented within the global context of climate negotiations," Chang said.
"In addition to the humanities, as a computer science student, I’m coming to this with a very software-focused lens,” Gramer said. “I'm looking at code efficiency and how you can write programs that use less power, especially at larger scales. A lot of the data centers around the world consume a ton of energy."
"Again, meeting different types of people,” Bezzat said. “I think this will be a great networking opportunity to hear different stories, different perspectives, understand different backgrounds. Just to gain a global understanding is going to be so exciting."
The students got the opportunity because of a partnership with American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, according to WPI. The full conference runs through Dec. 12.