The Chronicle is using wastewater surveillance to track the prevalence of COVID-19 in the Bay Area. Due to the scaling back of virus tracking efforts nationwide, scientists and public health experts — including those at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — have turned to monitoring the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 particles found in wastewater at sewage treatment plants as a more dependable metric for community-level infection rates. This tracker pulls data daily and displays data on the most recent and historic levels of SARS-CoV-2 concentrations at 12 Bay Area wastewater plants using WastewaterSCAN's API.
Some California police officers who get into trouble suddenly claim they’ve been injured. Their departments disagree, but still erase their misconduct and award them lifetime disability pensions. Under California law, police agencies are forbidden from dangling disability pensions as an inducement to rid themselves of problem officers. But an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program identified 49 officers across the state who, on the verge of being ousted for alleged misconduct, were allowed to walk away with their wrongdoing hidden and collect lifetime disability pensions for injuries their own employers had challenged as unsubstantiated.
For years, dozens of California police agencies have executed “clean-record agreements,” clandestine legal settlements that promise to hide the wrongdoing of an officer in exchange for the officer's guarantee to leave an agency without a fight, an investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle and UC Berkeley's Investigative Reporting Program.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed to allow licensed professionals to kill, at most, 450,000 barred owls over 30 years in California, Oregon and Washington to protect not just the northern spotted owl but also the forest ecosystems where the threatened bird evolved. The accompanying interactive graphic displays a keyboard-accessible slide to better visually compare the differences between barred and Northern spotted owls, complete with zoomed-in annotations and audio components of each owl's calls. 
Two of the three massive storefronts in the historic Flood Building — owned by Flood's family for two generations — sit empty. The building is one of the first sights visitors or residents encounter when exiting the BART station or waiting for the cable cars. When tourists hop on cable cars, the most prominent sights are colorful “for lease” ads plastered on every window from the turnaround to Union Square, instead of the chock-a-block boutiques and shops that used to line the street.
Accompanying this piece on feces complaints steadily rising even with city-run public restroom programs is a map showing all publicly accessible restrooms throughout the city as of March 2024. Readers can filter by “type” of restroom (for instance, whether the restroom is within a BART train station) and filter ones that are wheelchair accessible, open 24 hours or staffed. They can also click on each point to see locations and hours and days that the restrooms are open. I compiled data from multiple sources, confirmed and revised information, including locations, availability and accessibility, with multiple public and private sources, developed the map and did background reporting. 
In this guide, the Chronicle's Korean American staffers share their favorite comfort foods — galbitang (갈비탕), soondaeguk (순대국), kimbap (김밥), tteokmanduguk (떡만두국) — and where to get them in the Bay Area. Each of us come from similar but different backgrounds, hometowns and connections to the land of our heritage. And we each have our own takes on the food that nurtures our souls. I contributed to a section of this guide, and illustrated and designed the whole project.
In 2022, not counting wildfire deaths, over 36 million trees in California's national forests died. I dove into the main causes — drought stress, flooding, insect population increases and disease — and built this scrolly map that walks through the forests that have been hit the hardest.
San Francisco has a mind-boggling challenge ahead: Approve 82,000 new homes by 2031. The mandate comes from California officials, who say they're committed to improving the state's crippling housing shortage. But can it be done? This multimedia piece, with a video scrolly and Datawrapper visualizations I developed alongside designer Daymond Gascon and with the reporting of J.D. Morris and J.K. Dineen, visually shows just how daunting this task will be. 
In recent years, California's wildfires have seemed ever more apocalyptic. Huge swaths of forest have been wiped out, forcing thousands to flee and choking many more with smoke. But here's a fact that may seem surprising: Even more of the California landscape used to be on fire. Before the 1800s, when Europeans flooding into California outlawed fires set by Native Americans, at least 4.5 million acres — and sometimes up to 12 million acres — burned in California every year, according to UC Berkeley researchers.
Even as restrictions go away, long COVID is here to stay. 
After 38 years at Stanford University and compiling the most wins in college basketball history, Tara VanDerveer announced Tuesday night she would retire as the head coach of the Cardinal's women's team. VanDerveer, 70, spent 45 years as a head coach at Idaho (1978-80), Ohio State (1980-85) and Stanford (1985-95, 1996-2024), amassing an NCAA-record 1,216 victories. At Stanford, she led the team to three NCAA championships (1990, 1992 and 2021) and 14 Final Fours.
As it turns out, beaming high-speed internet to the remote corners of Alaska from thousands of miles away in space starts with a brick of titanium in a San Francisco warehouse. In a vast complex where the U.S. once churned out World War II-era Liberty ships, Astranis is building satellites that it plans to send to orbit more than 22,000 miles above the Earth's surface, with the first slated to be borne skyward aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral next year.
On February 11, 2021, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) updated their guidelines on allocating COVID-19 vaccines to include high-risk individuals. This revision in the vaccine rollout plan stem from immense pushback from disabled citizens and advocates after Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 25 that California would be switching from a plan that prioritized both healthcare workers and “people at increased risk for severe illness or death from COVID-19” in Phase 1 to an age-based vaccination eligibility framework. The collective response from disabled communities and leaders was swift. 
One month after Supreme Court's Roe ruling, over half of states have banned or moved to limit abortions.
In the King County area, E&Ts turned away about half of all referrals over the past two years due to medical reasons. Examples include dementia, CPAP machines, substance use, autism or a developmental disability, pregnancy, or a person with COVID-19.
Seattle lost 3,238 students from the 2019-20 to 2021-22 school year. And in the fall SPS projects it will lose 812 more, dropping its total enrollment to 48,748 students. Public school enrollment has fallen throughout the state since the pandemic began, but it's not clear why Seattle numbers are so dismal.
Fans of Costco’s hot dog combo can rest assured that the price won’t increase anytime soon, as CEO Craig Jelinek told CNBC on Monday. As food costs skyrocket and inflation hits record highs, even for wholesalers, Costco will hold steady on its iconic dog-and-drink deal. The combo has cost $1.50 since it first arrived in food courts in 1985, even though the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ inflation calculator says it’s worth more than $4 today.
John N. Conna fought his way out of enslavement to achieve political and business success in Washington state. His great-granddaughter wants you to know him.
If four Lower Snake River dams were breached to support salmon recovery, the energy, irrigation, recreation and other benefits they provide to the Pacific Northwest could be replaced for $10.3 billion to $27.2 billion, according to a draft report released Thursday by U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Washington Gov.
The agency responsible for regulating the ride-hailing industry in California has failed to collect consistent data on claims of assaults, threats and harassment on Uber and Lyft rides, a San Francisco Public Press investigation found.
Rent collections by San Francisco’s public housing agency fell precipitously in late 2019 and have continued to decline to less than half of what is owed, according to a San Francisco Public Press analysis — but the agency can’t explain why.
The morning and evening commute nearly disappeared in March 2020 as the Bay Area went into pandemic lockdown, and while travel on public transit continues to lag this summer, many people are getting behind the wheel to get to and from their jobs.
The fight for LGBTQIA+ acceptance has made major strides in recent years. The goal of health equity, however, has yet to be achieved, especially for many LGBTQIA+ identifying individuals living outside of UC Berkeley, other universities and even the United States.
Parasite (noun): an organism that lives off of another host. In 
A piece to unpack my childhood and, with it, my bitterness: the after-effect of the cultural whiplash. We were forced to blend in and acculturate with culturally-white Americans in the late 90s and 00s, only to suddenly be fetishized in the 2010s because we happened to come from the same background as people’s now-favorite idols. 
(Bahir Dar, Ethiopia) “Sugypia,” an amalgamation of Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia, three neighboring countries served by the Nile, is one of many colorful pieces created by Eyayu, a prominent Ethiopian artist-activist born and raised on the banks of Lake Tana, Ethiopia’s largest lake and the source of the Blue Nile. An artist of national consciousness, Eyayu incorporates both the symbolism from these bodies of water and indigenous aesthetics into his paintings and collages. His art is characterized by contrasting themes like traditionality versus modernity and the organic versus the artificial, aiming to raise awareness of the culture of Lake Tana and the Blue Nile’s lakeside communities and the environmental issues they face. 
In today's political climate, with international conflict and persecution causing increased migration and displacement of civilians, the topics “refugees” and “refugee camps” are debated among politicians, world leaders and news anchors; advocated for by nonprofit organizations and discussed heatedly among citizens around the world. Who are some of the large groups of displaced refugees? Why are they residing in long-term camps? What health concerns are there? And, most importantly, how as students and citizens can we help?
In the modern age of healthcare, even when new technology is being developed every day to cure and rid previously untreatable illnesses, populations around the world still utilize alternative and complementary medicine. What exactly is alternative medicine? What practices are there? Who practices CAM, and what are the consequences? Why should we care about alternative and complementary medicine?
I contributed to fact-checking incidents of violence against healthcare workers in México that were cited in this overall report created in collaboration between the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley and 
I conducted a semester-long research project measuring the perceptions of learning disabilities and individuals with them among Korean and Korean Americans. This project was motivated by a personal, vested interest in Korean perspectives on disability and education and how they interrelate, since I myself am a member of the Korean diaspora. This project is meant not as a comprehensive study on perceptions but rather a start in preparation of diving deeper into the psychological and socioeconomic factors driving these perceptions. Presented a shortened version of this research presentation at 
During the spring semester of 2020, I attempted to assess whether the Hill-Woolsey Fire specifically had an impact on Ventura County - a county that had endured multiple trauma-inducing events in a short period of time - from a linguistic lens by mapping all Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid) accepting mental health facilities listed by the Ventura County Behavioral Health Department from 2017, 2018 and 2020 and by analyzing Ventura County's needs assessment and long-term disaster recovery plan and identifying linguistic gaps.
On March 27, 2020, the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES Act) was signed into law. Click on the link above to view an interactive bubble map visualizing the different amounts allocated to higher education institutions across California and read a little bit more about how these allocations were calculated.
I wanted to see if there was a way I could scrape the Library of Congress's “Chronicling America” database and visualize the distribution of recorded newspapers still operating today (labeled as “current” in the database) in California by county and by city/neighborhood. I wanted to see if there were certain geographic areas within California where there was a dearth of local daily or monthly news, online or in print. The data was cleaned using Google Sheets. Click on the link above to view and interact!
These census-related visualizations were created as an independently-led project I did during the 2019 
Investigating the history of EDM (and its roots in European techno) and how big pioneers of the genre were Black queer artists or queer artists of color, I wondered how rich and diverse my own EDM listening taste was. Was I listening to a variety of artists from different backgrounds? Were the songs I had on repeat or the most songs I had on my EDM playlist from people of color (poc) or women/gender-nonconforming/nonbinary folks? Click the link above to follow a step-by-step tutorial on how I analyzed my own EDM playlist (and how you can too).
A personal project of mine: illustrating a thread on how healthcare insurance companies benefit from the pandemic, tweeted originally by former VP of Cigna Wendell Potter. The image text reads, "As a former health insurance exec, I don't think any story better illustrates my old industry's racket than the one I'm about to tell you: Right now, as we enter the worst public health crisis of our lifetimes (#COVID19), health insurers are still raking in record profits." Click the link to view the whole illustrated thread.
Disability Visibility was revolutionary in putting disabled voices and dreams into modern mainstream media. I illustrated my interpretation of six stories that touched me and impacted my view of what constitutes disability justice and what is needed to create a kinder and more accessible world. These stories include: "Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time" by Ellen Samuels, "The Beauty of Spaces Created for and by Disabled People" by s.e. smith, "How to Make a Paper Crane from Rage" by Elsa Sjunneson, "Nurturing Black Disabled Joy" by Keah Brown, "I am too pretty for Ugly Laws" (a poem by Lateef McLeod embedded in the story "Gaining Power through Communication Access"), and "I'm Tired of Chasing a Cure" by Liz Moore. Click the link above to view these illustrations in a keyboard accessible carousel/gallery and read more on my interpretations of them. + A look at my art +
professional + personal
About me~
Image description: On the left, an illustration of a Korean American genderfluid individual with slightly tan skin, smiling with teeth and tilting their head back with their eyes clothes, is pictured. They have long black hair tied up in a ponytail, piercings and dark eyebrows. They are wearing gold spectacles and a purple tank top with gold accents.
Hi y'all! I'm Jenny and I use they/them pronouns. Currently, I'm a graphics reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle! I graduated from UC Berkeley, where I majored in Public Health and minored in Journalism, Data Science and Global Poverty & Practice. My passions lie in art; disability justice; the prison-military industrial complex (and how academia plays a role in this); LGBTQIA+ identity and rights, AANHPI (Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander) justice; big tech, ethics and policy and the intersections of all of these topics.
Prior to working at The Chronicle, I interned at The Seattle Times as a graphics intern during Summer 2022 and the San Francisco Public Press during Summer 2021 as a data journalism intern, creating graphics and helping co-report/research stories related to health and housing. My first official data journalism stint (and brief foray into feature writing and copy editing) was in Spring 2021 with InfoNile, a geodata journalism initiative based in Kampala, Uganda. the Since 2022, I have served as a volunteer at the Asian American Journalism Association Conference.
Click here to view my resume! And click here to see my full resume on LinkedIn.
Fun facts: I love learning languages - I can speak some Spanish and Korean, and I'm currently trying to learn ASL (American Sign Language). I'm also very interested in electronic music production and run a regularly updated Spotify playlist called slide into my E'DM's. Give it a listen and please reach out if you're also interested in EDM or if you think a song should be added/removed!