Abhijit R. Abhyankar
Professor of Electrical Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi)
Abhijit R. Abhyankar (Ph.D.) is a professor of electrical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India. He has acted as an expert member of various committees established by the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) to provide technical support to resolve regulatory issues. He is a member of the National Reliability Council for Electricity (NRCE), set-up by the Ministry of Power, Government of India, through the Central Electricity Authority (CEA). He is also a member of the Taskforce on PoC Transmission Pricing Review, constituted by CERC, New Delhi.
Abhyankar is a lead investigator in international collaborative research projects that involve academia and industry from the UK, U.S., and The Netherlands. He has handled important projects and done consultancies for various Government and private agencies like POWERGRID, Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission, Department of Science and Technology, Indian Energy exchange, Mercaods EMI Pvt. Ltd., ReNew Power, and State Electricity Utilities. He has more than a hundred papers published in various international journals, international conferences and national conferences to his credit. Recently, he was conferred with a teaching excellence award at IIT Delhi. His current research interests include smart grids, electricity policy and regulatory matters, power system flexibility, power system optimization, power markets, and distribution systems.
Shoibal Chakravarty
Fellow, and Programme Leader, Climate Change Mitigation and Development
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Bangalore, India
Shoibal Chakravarty works on renewables integration, electricity demand and grid modelling for India; investigating and unpacking the climate change, energy, equity and development conundrum; social cost of power, and air pollution from power and urban mobility; and demographic transition in India.
Rohit Chandra
Fellow
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
Rohit Chandra is a political scientist and economic historian working primarily on energy, infrastructure and state capitalism in India. His recent work has covered the coal and power industries. Over the last decade, he has worked in the policy space on coal sector reforms, the politics of state power utilities (particularly in Jharkhand), and public finance decisions behind large infrastructure projects. He completed his Ph.D. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and is currently a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
Amy Craft
Energy Economist, Woodrow Wilson School and the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy; Lecturer in Public and International Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School
Princeton University
Amy Craft is an economist specializing in energy regulation and policy. As a lecturer at Princeton University, she has taught courses on several topics, including energy economics, environmental economics and risk analysis. Before coming to Princeton, Craft worked in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, analyzing mergers and acquisitions in the electricity sector.
Her research interests lie in the area of energy market structure and regulation, particularly in the electricity sector. She is interested in the valuation of technologies, both on the generation side and energy efficiency technologies on the consumer side, and how technological choice relates to market structure and regulation. She holds a Ph.D. in management science and engineering from Stanford.
Sara Constantino
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Princeton University
Sara Constantino is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE) and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She works with Elke Weber and the Rapid-Switch team on the individual and social aspects of and impediments to environmental action. In particular, their recent work investigates the potentials and pitfalls of using social-norms-based policy measures to address collective action problems, such as climate change, and how these findings and considerations might vary across cultural contexts. A second line of research aims at developing a comprehensive decision-making framework, which brings together theories from various disciplines and levels of analysis, in order to better characterize decisions in complex socio-ecological contexts.
Heidi Cooper
Ph.D. Student
The University of Queensland
Heidi Cooper is currently completing her Ph.D. at the University of Queensland, Australia. She is also a senior executive with over 20 years of industry experience in external engagement. She has provided political, reputational, public policy and social licence advice across a range of industries including for some of the most significant issues currently facing the energy sector. A solicitor by background, Cooper has held Board positions in the resources and education sectors. In 2016, she was selected to attend Harvard University’s inaugural program on Climate Change and Energy and was also appointed as a Global Change Scholar at the University of Queensland, Australia. She holds several tertiary qualifications, including a Master of Laws and a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Law.
Alicia Cooperman
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Alicia Cooperman is a postdoctoral research associate with the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). Her research focuses on the intersection of development, politics, and the environment. She is interested in how collective action interacts with local politics to shape sustainable development in developing countries. Her broader research agenda studies the politics of climate change mitigation and adaptation, the politics of natural disasters, and participatory natural resource management. Cooperman received a Ph.D. in political science from Columbia University in May 2019, a Master of International Affairs from UCSD’s School of Global Policy & Strategy in 2013, and a B.A. in human biology from Stanford University in 2008.
Turner Cotterman
Ph.D. Student
Carnegie Mellon University
Turner Cotterman is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). His research focuses on employing engineering, economic, and policy tools in order to address the complex energy, environmental, and socio-technical challenges affecting the pace of a low-carbon transition. Cotterman recently completed a semester as a Visiting Research Student at the University of Queensland’s Dow Centre, where he assessed the rates and extent of decarbonization activities by linking macroeconomic modeling with project planning and approval processes. Prior to arriving at CMU, he earned his Master’s degree at MIT and, as a Tata Fellow, contributed to the development of an optimization model for planning rural electrification strategies in India, Africa, and South America. He also worked for a period of time at ISO New England to address wind resource curtailments. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University with a focus on power systems and renewable energy technologies.
Ali Daraeepour
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Ali Daraeepour is a postdoctoral research associate with the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment. His research focuses on market design and grid operation reforms to enhance economic and environmental efficiency of electricity grids, with continued growth in variable renewable electricity and emerging technologies that support advancing zero-emission objectives. He earned his Ph.D. from Duke University in 2017. His dissertation addressed understanding grid-integration of variable renewable resources and related design of electricity markets and processes underlying operation of electricity grids. Prior to earning his Ph.D., he worked for several years as a power system engineer and consultant. Daraeepour is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the world’s largest professional association dedicated to advancing technological innovation.
Judi Greenwald
Principal
Greenwald Consulting LLC
Judi Greenwald is the Principal of Greenwald Consulting LLC and a fellow at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy & the Environment, with over 35 years of energy and environmental policy experience.
Until January 2017, she was deputy director for climate, environment, and energy efficiency at U.S. DOE’s Energy Policy and Systems Analysis Office, and the senior climate advisor to the Energy Secretary. As a vice president at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change), she oversaw analysis and advancement of technology, business, state, regional and federal innovative solutions in transportation, electric power, buildings, and industry.
She co-founded the National Enhanced Oil Recovery Initiative; advised state and regional climate initiatives; served on the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute, National Academy of Sciences panels studying vehicles and fuels, the White House Climate Change Task Force, the U.S. Congress Energy and Commerce Committee staff (working on the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments and the 1992 Energy Policy Act); the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the Environmental Protection Agency. She received a B.S.E., cum laude, from Princeton University, and an M.A. in Science, Technology and Public Policy from George Washington University.
Chris Greig
Dow Chair in Sustainable Engineering Innovation, University of Queensland
Andlinger Visiting Fellow in Energy and Environment, Princeton University
Chris Greig is a professor of chemical engineering and director of the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia. He joined UQ in 2011 following an executive career in industry, and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. His 25-year industry career commenced in 1986 as the co-founder of a successful process technology and contracting company, which he sold in 1999 to a major European engineering company. Since then and prior to joining UQ, he held senior project and executive roles in the construction and energy resources sectors, including as CEO of ZeroGen, a large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.
During his time at UQ, Greig also served as Chairman of the Energy Policy Institute of Australia, Deputy Chairman of Gladstone Ports Corporation (one of Australia’s largest energy export hubs) and Non-Executive Director of two ASX listed engineering companies. His main interests at UQ lie in Energy Transitions, Economics and Policy, Energy for Development, Mega-Project Implementation and CCS.
Sassan Hajirezaie
Ph.D. Student
Princeton University
Sassan Hajirezaie is a Ph.D. student, whose research focuses on the environmental challenges of subsurface energy technologies such as geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide, enhanced oil recovery, and natural gas production. He is particularly interested in investigating the conditions that could lead to precipitation of minerals in fractures, and the impacts of precipitation on fracture hydraulic properties and CO2 leakage, in hopes of developing a more creative, efficient approach to mitigating climate change. He has an extensive background in petroleum engineering, and has worked on various oil and gas projects, including but not limited to reservoir modeling, hydraulic fracturing simulations, and history matching of CO2-EOR operations.
Phillip Hannam
Energy Economist
South Asia, Energy & Extractives Global Practice
The World Bank
Phillip Hannam is an energy economist with the World Bank’s energy practice in South Asia, working mostly with India and Bangladesh. He supports the transition to renewable energy through investments in innovative technologies and analytics on energy storage. He was part of the team that negotiated an historic U.S.$75 billion replenishment for the World Bank’s low-income countries fund (IDA), focusing on climate and energy commitments. He has supported the World Bank’s strategic use of climate finance to maximize global climate action.
Hannam has a Ph.D. from the program in Science, Technology & Environmental Policy at Princeton University. His research examined the politics of China’s international support for coal power, particularly strategic responses of other donors and implications for climate change governance. Hannam was a visiting researcher at the University of Leeds in 2016, and a research scholar at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, India in 2015. From 2009-2011, Phil studied south-south cooperation as a Chinese Government Scholar at the U.N. Environment Program-Tongji Institute of Environment for Sustainable Development in Shanghai. His research or commentary have been published in Science, Nature Climate Change, Climatic Change, and India in Transition.
Karen Hussey
Director, Centre for Policy Futures
The University of Queensland
Karen Hussey is Director of the Centre for Policy Futures located in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The University of Queensland (UQ), a position she took up in July 2017. Trained as a political scientist and economist, Hussey undertakes research in the field of public policy and governance, with a particular interest in public policy relating to sustainable development.
Prior to taking up her position at UQ, Hussey was Deputy Director of the Global Change Institute at UQ, and prior to that she was Associate Professor in the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the ANU, where she now holds an Adjunct Professorship. From 2007-2010, she was based in Brussels as the ANU Vice Chancellor’s Representative in Europe, where she was responsible for developing the ANU’s research relationships and profile with European research teams and institutions.
Rohit Gupta
Ph.D. Student
Princeton University
Rohit grew up in Punjab and graduated from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi with a major in electrical engineering. After briefly working in different technology based research roles, he felt his calling lay in public services. He was selected as an Indian Administrative Services officer in 2006. He has worked as the district magistrate, which is the head of District Government in India, in six different districts. As the district magistrate, he was responsible for direct supervision of more than twenty government departments, maintaining law and order in the jurisdiction, and coordinating with multiple agencies to ensure the holistic development of district. He passionately believes in promoting and executing policies that protect the environment along with economic development. While studying for MPP program at Princeton, he rediscovered his passion for research and scholarship. He hopes to continue his journey of developing skills for contributing towards a sustainable future with the STEP Ph.D. program at the institute.
Matthew Ives
Senior Researcher
University of Oxford
Matthew Ives is an economist and complex systems modeller currently working at Oxford University on the Oxford Martin Post-Carbon Transition Programme. This cutting-edge research programme is focussed on developing solutions to climate change through an understanding of sensitive intervention points in our socioeconomic systems that can enable rapid reductions in emissions. Through this programme Ives is developing a suite of economic models based on complexity science, combining his experience in systems modelling with his passion for sustainability. Ives has previously worked both in the private and public sectors on a diverse range of programmes related to sustainability on land, air and sea. His past research ventures have included assessing national decarbonisation pathways in the UK; modelling long-term infrastructure strategies for water, energy, waste and transport for the UK and the United Nations; working on sustainability indicators for the US Forest service; and modelling fisheries in Australia. He has also spent a number of years as a professional software developer.
He holds an Honours degree in economics, a masters of environmental management, and a Ph.D. in systems modelling. He is an Oxford Martin School Fellow, a research member of Wolfson College, Oxford, and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, England.
Jesse Jenkins
Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment
Princeton University
Jesse Jenkins is an energy systems engineer with a focus on the rapidly evolving electricity sector, including the transition to zero-carbon resources and the role of electricity in economy wide decarbonization. He improves and applies optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate low-carbon energy technologies, policy options, and robust decisions under deep uncertainty. Jenkins received his Ph.D. in Engineering Systems and SM in Technology and Policy from MIT.
Robert Keohane
Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus
Princeton University
Robert Keohane is Professor of International Affairs, Emeritus, Princeton University. He is the author of After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (1984/2005) and Power and Governance in a Partially Globalized World (2002). He is co-author (with Joseph S. Nye, Jr.) of Power and Interdependence (1977/2012), and (with Gary King and Sidney Verba) of Designing Social Inquiry (1994). He has served as the editor of International Organization and as president of the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. He won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, 1989, the Johan Skytte Prize in Political Science, 2005, and the Balzan Prize in International Relations: History and Theory, 2017. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Sciences; and he is a Corresponding Member of the British Academy. His current work focuses on the comparative and international politics of climate change.
Haroon Kheshgi
Senior Scientific Advisor
ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research
Haroon Kheshgi is a long-time member of the technical staff at ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research where he is a senior scientific advisor. His research addresses many aspects of global climate change science, and the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. He has contributed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as an author, and review editor in the IPCC’s last four assessment reports, its Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, its Special Report on Land Use Change, and its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C. His activities have included chairing the IPIECA Climate Change Working Group, the Society of Petroleum Engineering’s committee on carbon capture and storage, and the first Carbon Management Technologies Conference. Haroon Kheshgi holds degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois (B.S.), and University of Minnesota (Ph.D.).
Ulrike Kornek
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Ulrike Kornek holds a Ph.D. in economics from the Technische Universität Berlin. She is a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton Environmental Institute and is affiliated with the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Kornek has developed small-scale Integrated Assessment Models which perform cost-benefit analysis for global climate change mitigation. She also uses analytical tools to evaluate different policy instruments such as carbon pricing and transfers.
Anthony Ku
Director of Advanced Technologies
National Institute of Clean and Low-carbon Energy (NICE)
Anthony Ku is the Director of Advanced Technologies at the National Institute of Clean and Low-carbon Energy (NICE), the research division of China Energy. In 2018, China Energy produced 15 percent of China’s electricity and had the world’s largest capacity in coal (180GW) and wind (37GW) generation. Ku is responsible for R&D addressing China Energy’s strategic challenges related to carbon management and air pollution, operational efficiency, and long-term sustainability. He is also the Chief Technology Officer for NICE America Research, the U.S. office for NICE, with responsibilities for strategy and technical execution in areas related to hydrogen infrastructure development, shale gas technology, and energy management.
Prior to joining NICE, Ku was a senior engineer at GE Global Research where he led advanced materials development projects in support of GE’s Water, Energy, Aviation, and Healthcare businesses, and coordinated GE’s corporate-level assessments to identify and address supply chain exposure to critical materials. He was also a founding editor of Sustainable Materials and Technologies, a technical journal focused on reducing the knowledge gap between materials development and system-level engineering design. Ku holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton University and a master’s and bachelor’s degrees in chemical engineering practice from MIT.
Joe Lane
Visiting Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Joe Lane has been involved in the Rapid Switch initiative, on and off for 5 years. He is currently helping to scope University of Queensland (UQ) and Princeton contributions to research on Indian energy system transitions, addressing some critical bottlenecks to long term deployment of CO2 sequestration infrastructure, and developing frameworks to prioritize research on energy transition bottlenecks. Lane’s earlier research spanned analysis of urban water and food systems, using environmental Life Cycle Assessment and economic Input-Output techniques. He received a Masters in Environmental Management, then a Ph.D., from The University of Queensland. Over the past 10 years, he has led UQ contributions to Australia-wide collaborative projects funded by industry, government and academic grant sources. Prior to that, Lane worked for a number of years in the Queensland government sector, addressing challenges for the management of natural water resources, and urban water systems. His early career was in operations and process engineering at large industrial facilities. Joe is about to join the Princeton team focused on Indian energy system research.
Jason Lankford
Energy Technology Center Director
Dow Chemical Company
Jason Lankford joined Dow as a production engineer in the Light Hydrocarbons II facility in Plaquemine, LA, in 2002. In 2005, he relocated to the Riverside, MO, Extruded Polystyrene (XPS) facility and served in various manufacturing roles including operations leader. In 2008, Lankford assumed duties as production leader for the XPS facility in La Porte, TX, and from 2010 through 2013, served as production leader and site leader for XPS facilities in Dalton, GA, and Riverside, MO. In 2013, he moved to St. Charles Operations and served as the production leader of the Ethylene Oxide, Higher Glycols and Methyl Glycol Ethers facilities until assuming the West Virginia Operations site director role in 2016. In June, 2018, Lankford relocated to Texas and assumed the Energy Technology Center Director role. In this role, Lankford directs the strategic plan for Dow’s power and utility assets in manufacturing sites around the world. Prior to joining Dow, He served as an officer in the United States Navy in various roles for 7 years.
Lankford earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Tulane University in New Orleans, LA, in 1995, and his Master of Engineering degree (Engineering Management focus) from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, in 2001. He is married and has 4 children; two daughters (21 and 20) and two sons (17 and 16).
Eric Larson
Senior Research Engineer
Energy Systems Analysis Group
Eric Larson is a Senior Research Engineer and head of the Andlinger Center’s Energy Systems Analysis Group. He is also affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson School’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment and with the Princeton Environmental Institute, and he has an appointment as a Senior Scientist with Climate Central.
Larson’s research interests intersect engineering, environmental science, economics, and public policy. His work is aimed at identifying sustainable, engineering-based solutions to major energy-related environmental problems, especially global climate change, and at informing relevant public policy debates. He is widely recognized for his work on the design and techno-economic assessment of advanced processes for production of clean transportation fuels and electricity from carbonaceous sources with CO2 capture and storage. He has recently collaborated with ecologists at the University of Minnesota and Colorado State University to better understand the potential of biomass-based energy options to deliver negative carbon emission transportation fuels in the US. He is currently co-leading a global collaborative research effort with colleagues in China, India, and Australia called Rapid Switch, which aims to identify sector-by-sector and region-by-region key likely bottlenecks to rapid energy-system decarbonization, and associated debottlenecking strategies. Larson has 87 peer-reviewed papers and more than 250 publications in total. He holds a BSE from Washington University in St. Louis (1979) and a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Minnesota (1983).
Ma Linwei
Associate Professor
Tsinghua University
Ma Linwei (Ph.D.) is an associate professor in the Department of Energy and Power Engineering at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His main research area is China’s energy system and energy strategy. For the past years, he has lead ans co-lead more than 30 national and international research projects, including the energy development strategy research programs supported by National Energy Administration of China (NEA), Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), BP, GM, Rio Tinto, CNOOC, State Grid Corporation of China, CGN (China Nuclear Power Engineering Co., Ltd.), and so on. In 2014, he independently opened a new course ‘Energy strategy for sustainable development’ for graduate students in Tsinghua University.
He also has more than 10 years’ experience of organizing cross-disciplinary research and managing academic institutes. He is the Deputy Dean of the Institute of Low Carbon Economy, Deputy Director of the Institute of Simulation & Control of Power System, Deputy Director of Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Center, Executive Director of Tsinghua-Rio Tinto Joint Research Center of Resources, Energy and Sustainable Development, and Director of Planning and Development of the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development.
Shangwei Liu
Ph.D. Student
Princeton University
Shangwei Liu is a Ph.D. student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy (STEP) program at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and works with Professor Denise Mauzerall. He is interested in understanding the co-benefit of climate change mitigation and air quality improvement in developing countries. Prior to coming to Princeton, he was an undergraduate student in the School of Environment at Beijing Normal University. His previous research focused on the impact on climate change mitigation of China’s current socioeconomic transitions and its policy implication by using environmental input-output analysis.
Yueh-Lin (Lynn) Loo
Director, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment
Theodora D. ’78 and William H. Walton III ’74 Professor in Engineering
Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering
Lynn Loo’s research interest is in the processing and development of materials for lightweight and flexible solar cells and circuits, the combination of which is being explored for self-powered “smart” windows to decrease energy consumption and increase occupant comfort in buildings. Her research expanded into economic modeling of liquid fuels production from non-food biomass after her stint at NewWorld Capital Group, a private equity firm that invests in environmental opportunities.
Having received her Ph.D. in 2001 from Princeton University, Loo returned in 2007 after starting her academic career at the University of Texas at Austin. As the Associate Director of External Partnerships at the Andlinger Center from 2011 to 2015, she launched and led Princeton E-ffiliates Partnership. Loo served as Acting Vice-Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science in the spring of 2016.
The author of over 170 publications, Loo has delivered more than 200 invited and plenary lectures globally and she serves on numerous international advisory boards of peer academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, journal publishers, and private companies. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, and a Strategic Advisor for NewWorld Capital Group. Her scholarly work has been recognized by numerous other accolades, including Sloan and Beckman Fellowships, the John H. Dillon Medal from the American Physical Society, and the Alan P. Colburn Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Diptiranjan Mahapatra
Associate Professor
Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Sambalpur
Diptiranjan Mahapatra is an associate professor in the Department of Strategy and Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Sambalpur. He received his Ph.D. degree, majoring in energy and environment economics and policy from IIM Ahemedabad in 2009.
His research interest lies at the intersection of public policy, economics, and technology, especially low-carbon pathways (LCP) that uses the global change assessment model (GCAM) for long term energy and climate policy scenarios; investigating the tension between regulation and competition issues in the energy and utilities; political economy of energy market; emergence and convergence of LNG market; environmental economics and regulation; climate change and carbon finance; and risk of leakage in carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). He has published articles in various journals, including Energy Policy, Journal of Public Affairs, and Climate Policy.
Besides his current affiliation, he has also taught at various IIMs including Ahmedabad, Kozhikode, Udaipur, and Nalanda University. Before coming into academics, he worked for almost a decade in energy and utilities domain. In the recent past, Mahapatra worked with Brookhaven National Laboratory, Department of Energy, USA.
Erin N. Mayfield
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Erin Mayfield is hybrid environmental engineer and policy researcher, with a focus on energy and environmental systems analysis, equity, and public policy. She previously worked as an environmental consultant on natural resource damages litigation and has held positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Congress, and Environmental Law Institute. She received her bachelor’s degree in environmental science from Rutgers University, master’s degree in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Richard Moss
Senior Scientist
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Over the past 18 months, Richard Moss has held visiting appointments with the American Meteorological Society and Columbia University’s Earth Institute as he works to launch a new civil society complement to the federal U.S. Sustained National Climate Assessment. The goal of this new network is to accelerate assessment and application of knowledge to support adaptation and mitigation projects at state and municipal levels to help bring about a “rapid shift” for adaptation. He is on leave of absence from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Maryland. Moss’ research focuses on (1) global change impacts and adaptation; (2) uncertainty characterization; and (3) scenarios. Among other appointments, Moss has served as director of the federal U.S. Global Change Research Program, as a technical support director for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and director of climate/energy at the World Wildlife Fund and the UN Foundation, where he led work on energy efficiency, among other projects. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in public and international affairs.
Andrew Pascale
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Andrew Pascale is a postdoctoral research associate in the Energy Systems Analysis Group. His interests are in timely low carbon energy transitions that allow inclusive high development levels for all global populations, while remaining within safe planetary boundaries. Specific energy transition interests include net-zero greenhouse gas emission scenarios for the USA by 2050, national clean cooking plans, and renewable electrification system design for remote communities. Before joining the Andlinger Center in 2019, Pascale was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2018. In 2018, he also led the technical design and installation of a 3.4 kW solar PV system powering a sewing workshop in a remote village in rural Thailand.
Balachandra Patil
Principal Research Scientist
Indian Institute of Science
Balachandra Patil has a Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, is an energy, environment and sustainability expert, and is ranked among the top 10 management researchers in India. He is ranked as the number one researcher in the “Strategic Management” domain in India. He has 32 years of experience as a faculty at the Indian Institute of Science, and as a visiting expert at Harvard University, UNDP-Bangkok, AIT-Bangkok and IGIDR-Mumbai. His research and professional expertise include energy and environmental economics and policy, sustainability transition, sustainable energy access, energy-technology-empowerment-sustainability nexus, climate change, and techno-economic and financial feasibility analysis. He has performed about 40 research and consultancy assignments for UNDP, European Commission, World Bank, SIDA, SANEI, RCUK, AIT, TERI, IGIDR, DST, and various ministries of government of India and private sector organizations. Has co-authored six books and published about 150 papers in International and National journals, conferences and edited books with an H-Index of 24. He has guided/is guiding 25 Ph.D. scholars (12 awarded and 13 ongoing). Patil was conferred with the distinguished alumni award of Manipal University in 2011.
Wei Peng
Assistant Professor
Penn State University
Wei Peng is an assistant professor at Penn State University, joint between the School of International Affairs and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. She is also an associate with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a fellow with the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her research aims to inform energy policy in both emerging markets and advanced economies to align their decarbonization efforts with local environmental and socioeconomic concerns, such as air pollution, water conservation, and economic development. She received her Ph.D. degree in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from Peking University, China.
John Pickering
Chief Behavioral Scientist
Evidn
John Pickering (Ph.D) is the chief behavioral scientist of Evidn. Evidn is an Australian-based behavioral science company that specialises in the design, delivery and evaluation of behavior change programs for improving sustainability outcomes.
Pickering’s work focuses on analyzing and modifying the attitudes, decisions, and behaviors of populations of people. He has a particular focus on the interplay between different disciplines, such as engineering and behavior science, to advance positive behavioral change across entire populations.
He is the project director of one of Australia’s largest environmental behavior change initiatives, Project Cane Changer, which involves the modification of farming practices in order to improve water quality entering the Great Barrier Reef. Cane Changer was recently recognized as among the top 10 global examples of how behavioral science is being applied to improve sustainability outcomes, including climate change mitigation.
Pickering is the co-chair of the Nature Sustainability Expert Panel on Behavioral Science, Design and Sustainability, and was recently appointed to the Queensland Government’s Health and Wellbeing Advisory Committee to oversee the development of behavioral change strategies for improving health outcomes across the state. He is an industry fellow at The University of Queensland, has published extensively in the areas of behavior change, psychology, sustainability and innovation, and is a regular commentator in state and national media outlets.
Srini Rajagopalan
Researcher
ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company
Srini Rajagopalan joined ExxonMobil’s Corporate Strategic Research lab in 2009. He has a Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from The Ohio State University. Rajagopalan has been involved in several projects aimed at developing advanced materials technologies for industry operations. He has authored/co-authored nearly 50 peer-reviewed technical publications, and is a co-inventor on >15 patent applications. Currently, he is working on identifying and growing research efforts around key themes for India.
Pooja Vijay Ramamurthi
Ph.D. Student
Princeton University
Pooja Ramamurthi is a doctoral student at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Her work has always been multidisciplinary, where she looks at technical, socio-economic, political, and developmental aspects of sustainability. At the moment, she is interested in understanding how decisions around energy and environment are made in developing countries. Prior to coming to Princeton, Ramamurthi worked at the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and the Center for Study of Science, Technology and Policy (CSTEP). She received double master’s degrees in sustainable energy from the Innoenergy scholarship granted by the European Commission.
Anu Ramaswami
Chair Professor of Science, Technology & Environmental Policy
University of Minnesota
Anu Ramaswami is the Chair Professor of Science, Technology & Environmental Policy at the University of Minnesota. She is the lead Principal Investigator and Director of the National Science Foundation’s Sustainable Healthy Cities Network, which spans eight universities and engages with several cities across the U.S. and internationally on topics related to urban infrastructure.
Ramaswami is an interdisciplinary environmental engineer who is recognized as a pioneer and leader on the topic of sustainable urban infrastructure systems. Over the past 12 years, she has advanced an interdisciplinary science of sustainable urban infrastructure and food systems that informs strategies, designs, and policies for developing environmentally sustainable, healthy, livable, and equitable cities worldwide. She studies urban areas in the U.S., India, and China in a global systems context essential for achieving the world’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Ramaswami received her B.S. in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology–Madras, India, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Ramaswami serves on the United Nation’s International Resource Panel and co-chaired its inaugural report on natural resources and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), presented at the United Nation’s Environmental Assembly in 2017.
Saphira Rekker
Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Finance
The University of Queensland
Saphira Rekker is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Finance at the University of Queensland and a Visiting Scholar at the Andlinger Center. Her research interests are in the translation of global climate goals to a corporate level. Specific interests are in the development of science-based targets to guide climate-safe decisions for companies and their stakeholders, and how these metrics can be used for climate-safe financial decision-making. Rekker was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, Australia in 2019. She has published in several high quality journals and works with the financial industry and government to develop science-based sustainability ratings and the integration of these into investment decisions.
Ambuj Sagar
Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi Professor of Policy Studies
Founding Head of the School of Public Policy
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
Ambuj Sagar is the Vipula and Mahesh Chaturvedi Professor of Policy Studies and the founding Head of the School of Public Policy at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Sagar’s interests broadly lie at the intersection of science, technology and development. His recent work has focused on innovation policy for meeting sustainability and inclusivity challenges, energy innovation policy and strategies (in areas such as biofuels, clean cookstoves, coal power, automobiles, and institutional mechanisms such as climate innovation centers), climate change policy and politics, capacity development, and higher education policy. He has worked extensively with various Indian government ministries as well as many multilateral and bilateral entities.
Sagar did his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at IIT Delhi. He subsequently received an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Michigan and then an M.S. in materials science, a Ph.D. in polymer science, and an M.S. in technology and policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
xiili sarkela-bassett
Graduate Student
Princeton University
xiili sarkela-bassett just completed her first year in Princeton’s Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate program. She grew up on the lands of the Red Willow People (now called Taos, NM), and cares deeply about decarbonization as a strategy for both energy sovereignty and climate resiliency in that region. sarkela-bassett’s career is to be a problem solver trained in both environmental engineering and justice, working to support bottom-up and local planning, design, and implementation of energy and water systems.
Mitchell Small
H. John Heinz III Professor of Environmental Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Mitchell Small is the H. John Heinz III Professor of Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy. He served as an associate editor for the journal Environmental Science & Technology (ES&T, 1995-2011) and as a member of numerous EPA Science Advisory Board (SAB) and National Research Council (NRC) committees. He was chair of the NRC Committee on Risk and Governance Issues in Shale Gas Extraction from 2012-2014. Small is an elected fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, received his Distinguished Educator Award in 2013, and received a similar Distinguished Educator Award from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors in 2017.
Small’s research involves mathematical modeling of energy and environmental systems, environmental statistics, risk assessment, and decision support. In recent years he has initiated new interdisciplinary research on climate change, human behavior, and energy system transitions, with collaborations initiated and continuing from his appointment as visiting professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University (2015-2016).
Leah Stokes
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
University of California, Santa Barbara
Leah Stokes’ research examines public policy, public opinion and political behavior, with a focus on energy, environment and climate change. Her forthcoming book, “Short Circuiting Policy”, examines how interest groups have tried to weaken clean energy laws across the American states. Other ongoing projects include examining protests against energy infrastructure, political staff in Congress, environmentalists’ electoral participation, violence against environmental activists, and effective water conservation policy in California. To date, her research has been published in top journals including the American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Energy Policy, Nature Energy, Global Environmental Politics, and Environmental Science & Technology.
She has published articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CNN and elsewhere. Her research has been cited in popular media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, The Toronto Star, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, National Geographic, NPR and CBC. Prior to academia, Stokes worked at the Parliament of Canada and Resources for the Future. She is also the co-chair of the Scholars Strategy Network’s Working Group on Energy and Climate. She is affiliated with the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management and the Environmental Studies Department at UCSB. She is also a fellow at the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy at John Hopkins SAIS and the University of Calgary School of Public Policy.
Bernard Tenenbaum
Lead Energy Consultant
The World Bank
Bernard Tenenbaum is an independent energy and regulatory consultant. He has served as a lead advisor to the World Bank on power sector reform and regulation projects in Brazil, China, India, Mozambique, Tanzania and Nigeria. He is a co-author (with Chris Greacen, Tilak Siyambalapitya and James Knuckles) of the World Bank book From The Bottom Up: How Small Power Producers and Mini Grids Can Achieve Electrification and Renewable Energy in Africa. Since its publication in February 2014, the book has been downloaded more than 27,000 times from the World Bank’s website. A French translation of the book was published in 2015. Before joining the World Bank in 2000, he served as the associate director of the Office of Economic Policy at the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He is an author or co-author of Regulation by Contract: A New Way to Privatize Electricity Distribution; Governance and Regulation of Power Pools and System Operators: An International Comparison; Electrification and Regulation: Principles and a Model Law; and A Handbook for Evaluating Infrastructure Regulatory Systems. He is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Regulation and Governance. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Colgate University and received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Vítor Vasconcelos
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Princeton University
Vítor Vasconcelos is a postdoctoral research associate at the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University. He graduated in physics at the University of Lisbon and, in 2017, finished his Ph.D. in sciences at the University of Minho in Portugal. His research agenda is on the role of institutions for managing social-ecological systems. It covers the topics of the management of public goods, the resilience of ecological systems, and evolutionary biology by using and developing tools and resources in the areas of mathematical ecology, complex systems, stochastic processes, game theory, scientific computing, network science, and numerical methods. Besides extending the theoretical work that is showcased in his previous research, he is now working on three central practical systems of global environmental importance: the global and local food systems, the sustainability of the Coral Triangle, and the ecological, social, and technical bottlenecks of rapid decarbonization of the energy system in India.
Belinda Wade
Lecturer in Sustainability
The University of Queensland
Belinda Wade is a lecturer in sustainability within the Business School of The University of Queensland. Following from her extensive experience in the corporate sector working in electricity trading and portfolio management, Wade completed doctoral studies in strategic management. Within her current role, she lectures master’s level courses on corporate sustainability and strategies for innovation also co-leading the school’s Business Sustainability Initiative research area. Wade has a number of ongoing research projects. One area of her current research focuses on organisational strategic decarbonisation applying dynamic capabilities and cognitive framing perspectives. A second area of research examines organisational adaptation and resilience measures to climate change and wider sustainability issues. Wade’s research has been presented at major international conferences, in academic journals, practitioner publications and as a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine.
Elke Weber
Associate Director for Education
Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment
Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs
Princeton University
Elke Weber is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her research models decision-making under risk, uncertainty, and time delay from a psychological and neuroscience perspective, with applications to both financial and environmental decisions. She was a lead author in the Fifth Assessment Report and is one in the current Sixth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has served as president of three professional societies (Neuroeconomics, Judgment and Decision Making, and Mathematical Psychology) and is a fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Experimental Psychology. She was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Risk Analysis.
Stephen Wilson
Professor
UQ Energy Initiative, The University of Queensland
Director, Centre for Energy Futures
School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering
Stephen Wilson is an energy economist and a faculty member in the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering at The University of Queensland (UQ), where he leads the energy research programme and he plays an active role with the Dow Centre for Sustainable Engineering Innovation at UQ in the Rapid Switch research initiative on the pace of global decarbonisation. Wilson teaches Energy Markets, Law and Policy for the Masters in Sustainable Energy, and Professional Practice and the Business Environment for final year undergraduate engineering students and for international masters students. He joined UQ after a career of over 25 years as an energy economics consultant in Melbourne, Hong Kong, London and Brisbane and in business as General Manager — Market and Industry Analysis for Rio Tinto Energy, where he managed a team of analysts in Brisbane, London, Shanghai and Delhi, including modellers running global energy and emissions scenarios. Wilson has worked on energy and environment studies in the electricity, gas and transports sector in Australia and more than 30 other countries, providing policy and strategy advice to international development banks, governments, utilities and corporate clients.
Claire White
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment
Princeton University
Claire White is an assistant professor at Princeton University in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment with associated faculty status in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, the Princeton Environmental Institute, and the Princeton Institute for Computational Science and Engineering. She completed her graduate studies in 2010 at the University of Melbourne supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award from the Australian government. After receiving her Ph.D., she worked as a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and was awarded a Director’s Postdoctoral Fellowship to research the atomic structure of low-CO2 alkali-activated materials.
White’s research focuses on understanding and optimizing engineering and environmental materials, with an emphasis on controlling the chemical mechanisms responsible for formation and long-term degradation of low-CO2 cements. This research spans multiple length and time scales, utilizing advanced synchrotron and neutron-based experimental techniques, and simulation methodologies. Professor White is the recipient of a number of awards including an NSF CAREER Award, the RILEM Gustavo Colonnetti Medal, and the Howard B. Wentz Jr. Junior Faculty Award (Princeton University), and has been listed several times on the Princeton Engineering Commendation List for Outstanding Teaching.
Ning Zhang
Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering
Tsinghua University
Ning Zhang is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Tsinghua University. He got his B.Sc. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China in 2007. He got his Ph.D in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University in 2012. After he completed two-year research as a post doctor, he started working at Tsinghua University as a Lecturer in 2014. He was a research associate in The University of Manchester from Oct. 2010 to Jul. 2011 and a research assistant at Harvard University from Dec. 2013 to Mar 2014.
He is an IEEE Senior Member and Cigre Member. His research interests include multiple energy system, power system planning and operation with renewable energy (wind power photovoltaic, concentrated solar power) and data-driven analytic of power system. He has published more than 100 papers, including more than 40 papers in IEEE Transactions and Applied Energy. He has 13 invention patents and 8 computer software copyrights. His papers have over 2000 citations with an H index of 24 on Google Scholar.
He was awarded The World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) Young Engineers for UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2018, and Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program by Chinese Association of Science and Technology in 2016. He serves as the editor of several top-tier journals including IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (TPWRS). He serves as the secretary of C1.39 and Member of C6/C1.33 and C6/C2.34.