She joins a list of scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists compiled by Vox who are building a more perfect future.
Portrait of Deb Chachra, Olin Professor of Engineering. Selected for Vox’s 2024 Future Perfect 50.
Deb Chachra, Olin professor of engineering, has been selected for Vox’s 2024 Future Perfect 50. The list, published on November 21, recognizes scientists, thinkers, scholars, writers, and activists building a more perfect future.
Chachra is the author of How Infrastructure Works: Inside the Systems That Shape Our World (Riverhead/Torva, 2023), and she writes, thinks, builds, and speaks widely on themes of technology and society. As one of the earliest faculty at Olin College, Chachra has been deeply engaged in all aspects of undergraduate engineering education, including the design of learning experiences and programs, as well as educational research.
“I teach 18-year-old engineering students. And let me tell you, climate despair is real. If you’re an 18-year-old and you care about the world and you’re interested in technology and you go to engineering school, the message that you’ve heard is essentially that the grown-ups who came before you have messed everything up, and it is now your job to face a future of deprivation and scarcity and try to undo or at least limit the damage. That is ultimately what people are saying when they say, ‘Look, we have to change, and we have to make sacrifices.’
But what I tell my students is that it’s not their job to stop climate change or to stop these bad things from happening. It’s to build this world of abundant, equitable, resilient, sustainable energy and agency for everyone. It’s where we’re closing the materials loops, where we’re putting solar energy to work to sieve out microplastics from the ocean, or build desalination plants so everyone who lives by the ocean has guaranteed provision of water that’s locally produced, so it doesn’t have to come from somewhere else. It becomes like, ‘Yeah, of course that’s what we do!’
To me, a huge piece of the social side is recognizing that this is the future that we have all the resources that we need to build. The goal is not to keep bad things from happening. The goal is to build this better future, and we will solve climate change on the way. We will hopefully start remediating our ecosystems along the way. But the actual goal is to build the part of the stories that they write science fiction about: the sort of peaceful, orderly, post-scarcity, abundant, self-actualized energy future.”
“It's precisely in these times of upheaval that we need clear-eyed optimists — people who can both imagine a better future and do the hard work of building it. The 50 individuals on this year's list embody that spirit. They're not just dreamers; they're doers. AI safety researchers working to ensure technological advances benefit humanity, climate scientists developing planetary solutions, animal welfare activists fighting one of the great moral crimes of our time — each honoree is tackling crucial challenges with both vision and pragmatism,” writes Bryan Walsh, Vox Editorial Director.