American Association for the Advancement of Science | New York, NY

Lucy Tu is a Chinese-American writer and journalist, originally from Omaha, Nebraska. At Harvard, Lucy studies Sociology and the History of Science with a secondary in Neuroscience. Her research explores the relationship between public health epidemiology and different forms of structural inequity, such as in labor markets and in the criminal justice system. As a Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard Kennedy School, Lucy has published articles in The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine. She is also a freelance science writer. She has written for Guardian, Harvard Public Health, and Smithsonian Magazine, and her work has been cited by the Brennan Center for Justice, national Drug Policy Alliance, and Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services.

Lucy’s research underpins her service in health law. As an intern for Greater Boston Legal Services, Lucy worked with 40 families from the Haitian Refugee community to assist them in obtaining Medicaid coverage. She also authored the legislative proposal for California Assembly Bill No. 2473, which was successfully enacted as a state law on September 27, 2022.

On campus, Lucy has served as the President of the Harvard Undergraduate Law Review and Director of the Boston Refugee Youth Enrichment Extension program. When a Boston school district eliminated science from its elementary core curricula, she organized a team of undergraduates to showcase biology,and chemistry demos for five K-5 schools. Building on those experiences this summer, Lucy will run HealthSciNYC, a health and science literacy program for K-12 students across New York, with locations ranging from Chinatown to the Bronx. She will also write for Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S.