It’s Air Quality Awareness Week and National Wildfire Awareness Month, so… we’ve got a really cool episode. We’re talking with Richard Deng, a freshman in high school, who after experiencing a series of smoky summers decided to dedicate his time to making an air quality prediction tool that has now won multiple science fair awards.
Lauren and Dylan talk with Richard about what exactly inspired him to make this tool, how he did it, what it can accomplish and where he’ll be taking it next. If you want more details on Richard’s tool, he wrote a blog post for us – check it out!

Listen to the podcast on: SoundCloud, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
SHOW NOTES
- Introduction
- Where There’s Smoke podcast series on air quality and wildfire smoke [1:55]
- How we met Richard Deng
- Interview with Richard Deng [3:40]
- What is the air quality prediction tool? [3:40]
- How Richard made the tool [6:50]
- Data used
- Process for creating tool and using machine learning
- Iterations of the tool
- How it predicts future air quality
- What Richard wants to do with the air quality tool
- What’s next
- Reminders: how to prepare for wildfire season [23:35]
PREPARED FOR POTENTIAL SMOKE?
Get ready with this handy checklist
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