Hi, I’m Saman de Silva

I spend my time in public service, data sci, and music

I’m currently building Engineering Hope with Peggy Yin + Aida Baradari. We’re trying to build a structure for student technologists to make products for social movements and build community doing so.

I am working towards a bachelor’s in stats/data science at Harvard College. I’m interested in a career in law + community-centered climate policy. At present, I use data science and software to uplift social justice advocacy.

In recent professional history, I have

  • written climate policy for State Rep. Joan Meschino

  • analyzed public comment data with Prof. Devin Judge-Lord (University of Michigan)

    • now we’re analyzing GPT’s ability to do few-shot clustering tasks with public comment data

  • helped Prof. Jennie Stephens (Northeastern) with her book project on higher education + climate justice

  • organized communities and analyzed policing data with JULIAN

I also do climate organizing on campus

  • with Michael Waxman (and a much broader community), I built the Harvard Climate Coalition and organized an EJ storytelling event called Our Climate Change Stories

  • with Shivi Srikanth and Jack Towers, I built the First-Year Climate Primer Program

  • with Sabrina Freidus, I co-organized Writing for the Climate

  • I also helped run weekly climate community dinners

And I try to find ways to contribute to public service generally:

  • I just wrapped up a Bluebonnet fellowship with the Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis

  • at Harvard, I scrounge for in-class opportunities to work with practitioners like 100% Democracy, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and JULIAN

I spent the past two years dual-enrolled at New England Conservatory as a master’s candidate in vocal performance where I studied under Prof. Jane Eaglen. I dropped out of the program to focus on my studies at Harvard, but classical singing holds a special place in my heart.

  • In high school, I was internationally and nationally recognized for my classical singing

  • At school, I am the recital co-coordinator for Harvard College Opera and will serve as a vocal coach for our upcoming production of Jules Massenet’s Cendrillon

I always welcome conversation and can be reached at “samands17[AT]gmail[DOT]com”