Past Student Fellows
Jie Yun
- PhD student
- 2023-2024 J-WAFS Fellow for Water and Food Solutions
- Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Jie Yun is a doctoral student in MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Her research centers on plant drought response. Specifically, Jie focuses on genotype-by-environment interaction (GxE), which is the observation that plant varieties respond to environmental changes differently. By studying GxE effects in crops, Jie hopes to identify genes that drive differences in drought stress response among plant varieties, as well as targets for the genetic improvement of crop species to increase crop yields with less water supply.
Before coming to MIT, Jie completed an undergraduate degree at Shenyang Jianzhu University in water supply and sewage engineering. She then received a master's degree in civil and environmental engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. There, Jie discovered a passion for plant-environment interactions during an independent study on perfluorooctanoic sulfonate (PFOS) which led her to realize the amazing ability of plants to adapt to environmental changes, toxins, and stresses. Jie has volunteered as a teacher in rural areas in China during her undergraduate degree and mentored multiple undergraduate students in the lab at MIT.