Student Spotlight: Adil Gazder MIDS'26

Bridging Data Science and Climate Finance to Drive Sustainable Impact in Southeast Asia

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This summer, Duke Master in Interdisciplinary Data Science student Adil Gazder has been serving as a graduate research assistant for the Climate Dialogue & Innovation Initiative: Southeast Asia and the World. Under the mentorship of Professor of the Practice Jonathan Stromseth, Adil has supported the initiative’s mission to identify and elevate promising climate solutions emerging from Southeast Asia.

To learn more about his experience, we sat down with Adil for a brief Q&A.

What are your primary responsibilities and projects? 

We’ve been mapping how private capital flows into climate finance (institutional investors and corporates to even households) specifically across Southeast Asia, and how that funding aligns with various sustainability objectives. Our current focus is on building a data pipeline from the ground up, that uses NLP and classification models to identify impact-driven entities and projects, based on financial disclosures and external aggregator profiles. A key part of the work also involves evaluating global climate frameworks and highlighting the disparities in disclosure standards across countries. It’s part research, part data science, and part strategy, exactly the blend I was looking for.

What types of skills and experiences are you gaining from this research assistantship?

Technically, I’m sharpening a lot of my data science and software skills by working with a lot of messy, real-world financial data. But beyond the tools, I’m learning how to think about climate accountability at scale, and how frameworks, policy and data all interact. It’s given me a lot of exposure to the intersection of finance, sustainability and advanced analytics, and having to communicate complex data concepts to a mixed audience, which has been super valuable. What’s been especially rewarding is the 0-to-1 nature of the work. We’re not just improving an existing system, we’re building an end-to-end pipeline from scratch to bring structure to an unstructured and underreported space.

What attracted you to this assistantship? 

Honestly, I was drawn to how multidisciplinary the project is. Climate, finance, policy, and technology rarely speak the same language, but this project brought them all together. This role gave me the chance to apply data science methods to real financial systems that impact global sustainability, and that felt like a meaningful way to contribute. It also aligned with my broader curiosity around how alternative data can drive better decisions in sectors that truly matter.

How is this assistantship helping to prepare you to achieve your professional goals?

I see myself working at the intersection of data science, finance, and social impact, whether that’s in climate risk analytics, sustainable investment strategy, or even building decision intelligence tools for mission and impact-driven organizations. This assistantship is helping me bridge the gap between technical execution and strategic thinking, translating messy data into insights that actually influence capital allocation! That’s exactly the kind of impact I want to keep building on.

What has been a favorite aspect of your assistantship so far?

I’d say two things: First, the freedom to explore. I’ve been encouraged to ask tough questions, experiment with ideas, and build without being limited by rigid playbooks. And second, the team has made a huge difference. It’s a collaborative, mission-driven group that blends diverse expertise across data science, policy, and finance. Everyone’s deeply committed to the work, which goes far beyond the academic. We’re building tools and frameworks that have the potential to inform financing decisions in Southeast Asia’s climate landscape, and knowing that our work could potentially reshape the world of sustainable private financing makes the experience especially meaningful.

A Duke Master of Interdisciplinary Data Science student with an engineering background, Adil Gazder builds decision engines for complex worlds. His professional experience includes helping shape commercial strategy for over 250,000 oncology patients, training models to forecast treatment decisions for thousands of physicians, and leading teams across consulting and logistics. 

Beyond work, he's a passionate hackathon participant, podcast host, and two-time All-India collegiate-level gold medallist in Taekwondo. He thrives on blending technical rigor with storytelling to translate messy, real-world data into actionable insights that drive impact. Whether it’s building AI tools to detect burnout in hospitals, creating predictive models for finance and sports, or leading cross-functional teams to solve strategic challenges, he's driven by the challenge of turning complexity into clarity and decisions into outcomes.