Blue Lab is proud to share that four of the lab's former undergraduate student interns—Farah Arnaout '26, Braeden Carroll '26, Alex Norbrook '26 and Grace Wang '26—graduated today from Princeton University.
Through the High Meadows Environmental Institute (HMEI) summer internship program, these phenomenal students were instrumental in the production of several original Blue Lab projects. In 2023, Carroll traveled to the Philippines to work on the first season of Carried by Water, an original podcast led by Mario Soriano that revisits the legacy of Super Typhoon Haiyan on the 10-year anniversary of the storm making landfall. That same summer, Norbrook and Wang traveled to North Carolina, California and Nevada to work on the first season of Mining for the Climate, an original podcast led by Jessica Ng, Nate Otjen and Juan Manuel Rubio. The podcast spends time with the communities grappling with a new lithium mining boom across the U.S., a critical but controversial driver of the nation's transition to clean energy. In 2024, Arnaout worked on the second seasons of Carried by Water and Archival Ecologies. The latter is led by Jayme Collins. Its second season—which explores the theme of ice as a precarious ecological and cultural archive—is slated for release in winter 2027. Arnaout also supported Professor Allison Carruth, Blue Lab's director, on a research trip to Amsterdam, as well as Blue Lab's inaugural public art project, the Popup Story Patch, led by Blue Lab's creative director Barron Bixler.
To recognize and commemorate their many contributions to the lab, we asked Farah, Braeden, Alex and Grace to share how their work with Blue Lab helped shape their time at Princeton.
Name Farah Arnaout '26
Projects Worked On Archival Ecologies, Carried by Water, Popup Story Patch
Major Architecture
Minor Urban Studies
I joined Blue Lab in 2024 as a summer intern, where I contributed to multiple projects through research, GIS mapping, photography and drawing. One of the most impactful projects involved supporting Professor Carruth’s research on Amsterdam’s strategies for adapting to sea level rise. As part of this work, I traveled to Amsterdam with the team, where we engaged with and learned from local artists, entrepreneurs and designers.
Working in Blue Lab introduced me to doing fieldwork in an international context and helped me develop skills in on-site research, audiovisual documentation and collaborative, team-based creative work. These skills later became essential during my thesis research.
Since my time at Blue Lab, I have continued to hone my skills in GIS and research in my urban studies research and design classes. Also, after my time with Blue Lab, I expanded my academic focus from architecture at the building scale to urban design at a broader scale.
After graduation, I will be pursuing a Master’s in Architecture and Urban Design at Columbia University. I look forward to continuing my work at the intersection of architecture, urban design and climate research, and to developing a career in this field.
Name Braeden Carroll '26
Project Worked On Carried by Water
Major Civil and Environmental Engineering
I joined Blue Lab in 2023, the summer after my first year at Princeton, and I was immediately given the opportunity to travel to the Philippines with Dr. Mario Soriano to document and share the untold stories of the decade-long recovery process following 2013’s Super Typhoon Haiyan. As the audio engineer on the project, I recorded interviews and processed the audio. I even got to lead one interview myself! Upon returning to Princeton, I then spent the next year co-producing and editing the Carried by Water podcast. Throughout this project, I engaged with countless different communities, and I developed new skills in audio and multimedia production, photography, and digital communication. I am extremely grateful to the Blue Lab team for taking me on as an intern, and I reflect very fondly on my experience that summer.
In the three years since my time with Blue Lab, I have continued my academic journey through the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Princeton. I spent the next summer on campus with Professors Maria Garlock and Branko Glišić working in the Creative & Resilient Urban Engineering (CRUE) lab, designing a bridge/flood-barrier hybrid structure to sustainably achieve the goals of two separate structures in one.
Working with Blue Lab has given me the opportunity to connect with a number of other lab members, such as Hannah Riggins '27, who picked up the Carried by Water project after my departure, and who has become a great friend of mine. I look forward to a future of following and continuing to engage with Blue Lab!
Name Alex Norbrook '26
Projects Worked On Mining for the Climate
Major History
Minor Environmental Studies, Journalism
As an intern with Blue Lab in 2023, I contributed to the first season of the Mining for the Climate podcast. I conducted background research on the social and environmental harms caused by lithium mining, helped arrange interviews, recorded interviews in Nevada and North Carolina, helped storyboard the season, and wrote and produced one of the season’s episodes. I learned tons of audio storytelling skills, including how to position a microphone to get good audio, how to braid narration and testimony together, and how to plan a narrative arc for a multi-episode documentary series. Conducting interviews in Nevada and North Carolina also helped me learn how to build relationships and trust with interlocutors and ask hard questions of mining company executives.
Since my time at Blue Lab, I have continued to pursue environmental storytelling. As a Journalism minor, I have written stories about how extractive infrastructure causes environmental damage and social harms, through explorations of the intricacies of brownfield sites in New Jersey and coal infrastructure in Maryland and Tamil Nadu, India.
After graduation, I’ll be working at the Environmental Defense Fund as an HMEI fellow focusing on state-level climate policy in Colorado and California. I also hope to build on my environmental storytelling skills as a freelance journalist.
Name Grace Wang '26
Project Worked On Mining for the Climate
Major Economics
Minor Theater
As a summer 2023 Blue Lab intern, I worked on researching and producing the first season of Mining for the Climate. During our fieldwork, which took us to North Carolina, California and Nevada, I remember debriefing with our team—Nate, Juan, Alex, Max and me—in the car after a profoundly insightful interview we had with a community organizer. Bouncing reflections off each other in the car as we drove through the Nevada desert, I felt lucky to be learning from people making a difference in their communities. The experience reminded me of the reason why I was drawn to the internship in the first place, which was the power of climate storytelling.
Since Blue Lab, I’ve become passionate about empirical social science research and continued my interest in narrative storytelling through the theater. I’ve worked as a research assistant in economics contributing to projects on topics like fertility in the U.S. and gender in the workplace, and through my independent work at Princeton I’ve researched topics in public health and history. In theater, I’ve written plays and served as a sound designer. My Blue Lab experience allowed me to explore a landscape of social topics that continue to inform my academic discipline and interests.
Starting summer 2026 I’ll be working at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as a research assistant in a microeconomics research group focused on inequality. I’ll also be continuing to write for the theater and pursuing as many theatrical opportunities as I can in the city!