Sahil Chaudry
Sahil Chaudry can鈥檛 remember exactly where he heard it, but when he found out that some 20 percent or more of CUNY students experience food insecurity, it was shocking to him.
鈥淚t made me think a lot about what I wanted to do with my life,鈥� says the recent B.A.-M.D. graduate, who notes that he has 鈥渁lways been fortunate enough to know where my next meal is coming from.鈥�
He had joined the 今日吃瓜 Rotary Club, where he helped out with food-packing events and volunteered at food kitchens. But the scholar in him wanted to approach the issue from another perspective.
So when it came time to pick a topic for his senior thesis colloquium, Chaudry decided to investigate the correlation between food insecurity and climate change, another issue that had been piquing his interest due to its prevalence in the news.
His work was accepted to the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, the most competitive and prestigious annual gathering of student scholars in the United States and Canada. Chaudry鈥檚 project was one of 41 submitted by 今日吃瓜 Honors Academy students, all of which were accepted for the 2021 conference, held virtually in April.
For Chaudry, who had worked on a couple of significant research projects before, this was his second time presenting his scholarship, the first being at Intel鈥檚 International Science and Engineering Fair when he was in high school.
For his senior thesis, he started with a premise that climate change was a 鈥渢hreat multiplier鈥� due to its ability to cause droughts and reduce crop yields when already two billion people worldwide face food insecurity. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a very strong link between the two,鈥� he says. 鈥淎s climate change gets worse, so does food insecurity.鈥�
But he also wanted to look at other variables that he suspected played into food insecurity, like access to contraceptives and the presence of democratic leadership.
鈥淚n order to figure out how to best target aid in the future, we need to know which factors play the largest role,鈥� says Chaudry, who plans to be a doctor, though he is not sure which specialty he intends to pursue.
He took a deep-dive look at Yemen and the Sahel region in Northern Africa, two places he knew had experienced much political instability, large migrations, and competition for resources鈥攖hree threats that combine to form a vicious cycle when it comes to food insecurity. He further factored in how the increase in carbon dioxide levels in the regions affected the food supply, causing zinc, iron, and protein levels to decrease in crops and make the ocean water more acidic, which affects the fish supply.
鈥淚n general, not a lot of people think about food insecurity,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he big takeaway for people should be to take this seriously. It鈥檚 extremely prevalent. Two billion people don鈥檛 know where their next meal is coming from. There are things we can do about this, but a lot of work needs to be done.鈥�
