Grace Calvert Young
Grace Young is a Senior Research Engineer and Lead Scientist at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly GoogleX), where her team is creating radical new technologies to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. An avid sailor, diver and National Geographic Explorer, Grace is passionate about developing tools to better understand, explore and manage the ocean. She earned her BSc in Mechanical & Ocean Engineering from MIT ('14), where she won the Wallace Prize as MIT’s top ocean engineering undergraduate, the Keil Award for excellence in ocean engineering research, and the Wiesner Institute Award for advancing art and technology. She received her PhD as a Marshal Scholar at the University of Oxford ('18), where she was a member of the Zoology Department's Ocean Research and Conservation Group and the Engineering Department's Active Vision Laboratory. In 2019, she filmed the National Geographic documentary “Ocean's Breath” that explores connections between 300 million year old fossils in mountains and modern coral reefs. She has developed robots, imaging systems, and other technologies for MIT, CERN, NASA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She assists National Geographic in various initiatives to educate and inspire young people about the ocean, including augmented reality exhibitions, games, and classroom outreach. In 2014 she lived underwater for 15 days as a mission scientist on Fabien Cousteau's Mission 31, the youngest Aquarius aquanaut at the time. A former ballerina, she's active in arts communities; her exhibition of ultra-high speed photography captured while living underwater was selected as “Best of Oceans at MIT 2015.” Grace was a four-year varsity letterman on MIT's sailing team and sailed across the Atlantic for the non-profit SailFuture. Grace also serves as Chief Scientist for the Pisces VI deep sea research submarine and as a liaison to the US National Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Grace Young is a Senior Research Engineer and Lead Scientist at X, Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory (formerly GoogleX), where her team is creating radical new technologies to protect the ocean while feeding humanity sustainably. An avid sailor, diver and National Geographic Explorer, Grace is passionate about developing tools to better understand, explore and manage the ocean. She earned her BSc in Mechanical & Ocean Engineering from MIT ('14), where she won the Wallace Prize as MIT’s top ocean engineering undergraduate, the Keil Award for excellence in ocean engineering research, and the Wiesner Institute Award for advancing art and technology. She received her PhD as a Marshal Scholar at the University of Oxford ('18), where she was a member of the Zoology Department's Ocean Research and Conservation Group and the Engineering Department's Active Vision Laboratory. In 2019, she filmed the National Geographic documentary “Ocean's Breath” that explores connections between 300 million year old fossils in mountains and modern coral reefs. She has developed robots, imaging systems, and other technologies for MIT, CERN, NASA, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). She assists National Geographic in various initiatives to educate and inspire young people about the ocean, including augmented reality exhibitions, games, and classroom outreach. In 2014 she lived underwater for 15 days as a mission scientist on Fabien Cousteau's Mission 31, the youngest Aquarius aquanaut at the time. A former ballerina, she's active in arts communities; her exhibition of ultra-high speed photography captured while living underwater was selected as “Best of Oceans at MIT 2015.” Grace was a four-year varsity letterman on MIT's sailing team and sailed across the Atlantic for the non-profit SailFuture. Grace also serves as Chief Scientist for the Pisces VI deep sea research submarine and as a liaison to the US National Committee for the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development.
Photo credit: MIT/Allegra Boverman
Can people live under the sea? / LEGO + National Geographic Kids
Extreme Ocean: Exploring The Deep / National Geographic
The Secret of the Ocean (Il Segreto Delgi Oceani)/ National Geographic
Innovators of Tomorrow/ BBC
Explorer of the Year/ Somerville College Magazine, University of Oxford
Fourteen world-changers named 2017 National Geographic Emerging Explorers/ National Geographic
An Aquanaut Charting the Sea’s Unknowns/ National Geographic
Somerville student offered opportunity to work with NASA/ Oxford
Why this Kansan bought a deep-sea submarine/ Kansas City Star
How to Save our Sick, Neglected Oceans: A CERN for the Oceans/ TIME Op-Ed
Cousteau Leads Aquanauts in Undersea Expedition/ National Geographic
Grace Undersea/ MIT Technology Review
Grace Young Interview | Job Living Under the Ocean/ Teen Vogue
Best of Oceans at MIT 2015/ Oceans at MIT
Slow-Motion Science and the Art of Capturing Marine Life/ Oceans at MIT
New MIT Exhibit Features High-Speed Underwater Photography/ Dive Info
Top 10 College Women/ Glamour
A young researcher talks about Fabien Cousteau’s underwater living experiment/ Earth Island Journal
Urge to protect oceans propels youngest aquanaut on Cousteau’s Mission 31/ Miami Herald
Grace Undersea: A Senior Forgoes Commencement to Spend 15 Days at the Bottom of the Ocean/ MIT Technology Review
Under the Sea/ MIT News
Under Pressure/ Wärtsilä Magazine
Marshall Scholars/ MIT News
Grace C. Young - Wiesner MIT Institute Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts at MIT/ Arts at MIT
Missiles & Misconceptions: Why We Know More about the Dark Side of the Moon than the Depths of the Ocean/ DSpace MIT