Second-year UChicago undergraduate Zilin Xiang has won the Climate Systems Engineering initiative (CSEi) inaugural student essay contest.
CSEi launched the contest this winter to foster an informed dialogue on sunlight reflection methods (SRM) at the University’s undergraduate level. This year’s prompt specifically engaged students on the topic of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI)—one proposed version of SRM that involves dispersing tiny reflective particles of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere to cool the planet.
The contest asked students to write an argumentative essay answering the question: “Should humanity deliberately deploy aerosols in the stratosphere to offset part of the warming caused by CO₂ emissions?”
All UChicago undergraduates were invited to submit to the contest, regardless of major or experience with the topics of SRM and SAI. Participants were asked to craft interdisciplinary arguments—using physical, economic, political, or social reasoning—either for or against the deliberate deployment of aerosols.
The essays were judged anonymously by a panel of faculty, scholars, and staff. Each reviewer evaluated submissions independently and without knowledge of the other reviewers’ scores or the identities of the essayists. Submissions were evaluated on the originality of argument, strength of reasoning and evidence, and clarity and feasibility of policy recommendations.
A total of $7,000 in prizes was awarded to finalists, with $4,000 going to first place, $2,000 going to second place, and $1,000 going to third.
Xiang, a Computational and Applied Math major in the College, titled her winning essay, “A Necessary Intervention: A Utilitarian Case for Governed Stratospheric Aerosol Injection.”
In her winning essay, Xiang argued that the “deliberate, multilaterally governed deployment of stratospheric aerosols is a necessary complement to decarbonization, and that the serious objections to SAI demand better governance design rather than abandonment of the technology.” You can read Xiang’s full essay here.
“The essay topic itself—stratospheric aerosol injection—was genuinely new to me, but that made the research process more engaging,” Xiang said. “Winning feels like a meaningful recognition of both my research ability and my commitment to using writing as a tool for environmental advocacy. I hope to keep doing that.”
Amara Nwuneli, a first-year studying Public Policy & Environmental Urban Studies, was awarded second place for her essay, “The Cultural Architecture of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection: Systems, Resource Extraction, and Climate Justice.”
In her second-place essay, Nwuneli offered an indictment of SAI deployment, arguing that deployment represents “a total surrender to the very systems of extraction and pollution that created the crisis, exchanging the known challenges of climate change for the unpredictable, interconnected horrors of an artificially engineered atmosphere.” Read Nwuneli’s full essay here.
Graduating fourth-year Geneva Kirk Drayson, an Environmental Science major, won third place for her essay, “Governing the Intervention: The Moral Case for Stratospheric Aerosol Injection Is a Governance Design Problem.”
Drayson’s essay argues for SAI deployment, saying that despite the governance challenges and “moral hazard,” a refusal to deploy SAI is “a choice to preserve a system in which the powerful emit, the vulnerable suffer, and no one is accountable. We can do better—not by ignoring the risk, but by governing it.”
CSEi Founding Faculty Director David Keith announced the contest winners at the inaugural Frontiers in Climate Systems Engineering conference on May 18.
“The next generation will likely make some consequential decisions about climate engineering, so I’m particularly excited to hear what they have to say,” said Keith.
The next iteration of the CSEi student essay contest will take place this fall, with a submission deadline in January 2027. Stay tuned for more details. Please send any suggestions about the prompt format to info-csei@uchicago.edu.