Fahmida Ahmed is director of the Office of Sustainability and heads the campus program Sustainable Stanford. She designs and implements sustainability programs, supports long-term energy infrastructure planning, directs education and outreach efforts, chairs the Sustainability Working Group, and promotes academic integration. Ahmed received a 2012 Sustainability Champion Award from the California Higher Education Sustainability Consortium for her leadership in the sustainability arena. Before joining Stanford in 2008, she was the sustainability specialist at UC-Berkeley, where she developed and managed the campus climate program. Ahmed earned a BA in economics from Smith College and a master’s in environmental science and management from the Bren School at UC-Santa Barbara. Her academic apprenticeships include positions at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Prior to her career in sustainability, Ahmed worked in financial services and high-tech as a marketing manager at Siebel Systems (now Oracle Inc) and project manager with Providian Financial.
Energy@Stanford & SLAC 2011 - Speaker Bios
Doug Arent is the Joint Institute's inaugural executive director. He specializes in strategic planning and financial analysis competencies; clean energy technologies and energy and water issues; and international and governmental policies. In addition to his Joint Institute responsibilities, Arent is an author and expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Renewable Energy and a member of the U.S. Government Review Panel for the IPCC Reports on Climate Change. He is also a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
In 2008, Arent was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change. He is on the Executive Council of the U.S. Association of Energy Economists and a member of the Keystone Energy Board. Arent is also on the Advisory Board of E+Co, a public-purpose investment company that supports sustainable development across the globe. He also serves on the Chancellor's Committee on Energy, Environment, and Sustainability Carbon Neutrality Group at the University of Colorado. Arent was the chair of the Quantitative Work Group in support of the Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Council of the Western Governors' Association.
Prior to his current position, Arent was director of the Strategic Energy Analysis Center at NREL from 2006-2010. He has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, an MBA from Regis University, and a bachelor's of science from Harvey Mudd College in California.
Sven Beiker is the executive director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS Since 2008, Beiker has been overseeing the strategic planning, resources management and project incubation for the CARS. He also holds teaching positions at Stanford's School of Engineering and Graduate School of Business. Beiker was instrumental in launching research programs at Stanford in legal aspects of autonomous driving, wireless power transfer to moving vehicles, the Revs Program and the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. Before coming to Stanford, Beiker worked at the BMW Group for more than 13 years, where his responsibilities included technology scouting, innovation management, systems design and series development. He holds several patents in chassis and powertrain technologies. He earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from Braunschweig University of Technology.
Sally M. Benson holds three appointments at Stanford University: professor of energy resources engineering, director of the Precourt Institute for Energy and director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). Prior to coming to Stanford in 2007, she was at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 29 years, where she held several key positions, including deputy director of operations. A groundwater hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson is a leading authority on carbon capture and storage and emerging energy technologies. In 2012, she served as a convening lead author of the Global Energy Assessment, a multinational project coordinated by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. Her research interests include technologies for a low-carbon future, net energy analysis and geologic carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration in saline aquifers. Benson serves on the boards of directors of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Carbon Management Canada and Climate Central. She received a B.S. in geology from Barnard College at Columbia University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in materials science and mineral engineering from the University of California-Berkeley.
Stacey Bent is a professor of chemical engineering; director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy; co-director of the Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC); and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Bent leads an active research group in semiconductor processing, surface science and materials chemistry. She supervises students and postdocs working toward applications in renewable energy devices and next-generation microelectronics. Bent received the Tau Beta Pi Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2006), the Coblentz Award (2001) and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1995). She earned a BS in chemical engineering at UC-Berkeley and attended graduate school as a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Fellow at Stanford, earning a PhD in chemistry. She was a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey.
Adam Brandt is an assistant professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford. His research focuses on the environmental impacts of oil shale and other substitutes for conventional petroleum; mathematical modeling of petroleum depletion and the transition to oil substitutes; and capture and storage systems. As a teacher, his goal is to help train the next generation of energy professionals to optimize energy systems so as to improve their efficiency, rigorously account for the environmental impacts of energy sources and think critically about systems-scale phenomena in energy production and consumption. Brandt earned a BS in environmental studies with an emphasis on physics from UC-Santa Barbara, and an MS and PHD from the Energy and Resources Group at UC-Berkeley.
Yi Cui went to the University of Science and Technology of China, where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry in 1998. He attended graduate school from 1998 to 2002 at Harvard University, where he worked under the supervision of Professor Charles M. Lieber. His Ph.D. thesis concerned semiconductor nanowires for nanotechnology including synthesis, nanoelectronics, and nanosensor applications. After that, he went on to work as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow with Professor Paul Alivisatos at University of California, Berkeley. His postdoctoral work was mainly on electronics and assembly using colloidal nanocrystals. In 2005, he became an assistant professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. In 2010, he was promoted to an associate professor with tenure. His current research is focused on nanomaterials for energy storage, photovoltaics, topological insulators, biology and environment.
He has received the Sloan Research Fellowship (2010), the Global Climate and Energy Project Distinguished Lecturer (2009), KAUST Investigator Award (2008), ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), MDV Innovators Award (2007), Terman Fellowship (2005), the Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004), Miller Research Fellowship (2003), Distinguished Graduate Student Award in Nanotechnology (Foresight Institute, 2002), Gold Medal of Graduate Student Award (Material Research Society, 2001).
Tom Devereaux is director of Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES), associate lab director for photon science at SLAC and a member of the Pacific Institute for Theoretical Physics. Devereaux’s main research interests are in the areas of theoretical condensed matter physics and computational physics. His research effort focuses on using the tools of computational physics to understand quantum materials. His awards include a U. S. Department of Education Fellowship, a Research Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a Premier's Research Excellence Award from the Province of Ontario, and a Scientist Research Fellowship from the Embassy of France. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society. Devereaux earned a BS from New York University, and an MS and PhD in physics from the University of Oregon.
Noah Diffenbaugh is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford University. His research interests are centered on the dynamics and impacts of climate variability and change, including the role of humans as a coupled component of the climate system. Much of his group’s work has focused on the role of fine-scale processes in shaping phenomena such as extreme weather, climate-vegetation feedbacks, atmospheric forcing of the coastal ocean, and Holocene climate variability. His group’s work has also focused on the potential impacts of greenhouse-induced climate changes on natural and human systems, including on water resources, agricultural pests, premium wine production, human health, and poverty vulnerability. Diffenbaugh serves on the Executive Committee of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union, and as an Editor of Geophysical Research Letters. He has provided scientific briefings to State and Federal lawmakers, and was a author of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program assessment (2008). His work has been featured widely in the national and international media, including CBS News, NBC News, CNN News, The Weather Channel, Voice of America, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Business Week, and The Observer. In 2006, Diffenbaugh received the James R. Holton Award from the American Geophysical Union, recognizing outstanding research contributions by a junior atmospheric scientist.
Persis Drell is Professor and Director at SLAC. She received her B.A. in mathematics and physics from Wellesley College in 1977. She received her Ph.D. in atomic physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. She then switched to high-energy experimental physics and worked as a postdoctoral scientist with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She joined the faculty of the Physics Department at Cornell University in 1988. In 2000, she became head of the Cornell high-energy group; in 2001, she was named deputy director of Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. In 2002, Drell accepted a position as Professor and Director of Research at SLAC. Her current research activities are in particle astrophysics. In 2007 she was named Director at SLAC.
Drell has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship; a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award; she is a fellow of the American Physical Society; a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; and in 2010 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Her recent activities include serving on COSEPUP/BPA for the 2004 publication, Setting Priorities for NSF-Sponsored Large Research Facilities for the National Academy of Sciences, and chairing the HEPAP subcommittee that produced the Quantum Universe report in 2004. In spring of 2006 she was the Morris Loeb Lecturer in Physics at Harvard University.
Chris Field is the founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology; a professor of biology and of Environmental Earth System Science at Stanford; and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. His research emphasizes impacts of climate change, from the molecular to the global scale, including major field experiments on the responses of California grassland to global change and assessments of the effect of climate change on agriculture. In 2008, Field was elected co-chair of Working Group 2 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and will lead the next IPCC assessment on climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. He earned two biology degrees: an AB from Harvard University and a PhD from Stanford.
Martin Fischer is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a a Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. His research goals are to improve the productivity of project teams involved in designing, building, and operating facilities and to enhance the sustainability of the build environment. Fischer’s work develops the theoretical foundations and applications for virtual design and construction (VDC). VDC methods support the design of a facility and its delivery process and helps reduce the costs and maximizes the value over its lifecycle. His research has been used by many small and large industrial government organizations around the world.
Margot Gerritsen is an associate professor of energy resources engineering and the director of the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering (ICME) at Stanford. Her work is about understanding and simulating complicated fluid flow problems, focusing on the design of highly accurate computational methods to predict the performance of enhanced oil recovery methods. She is particularly interested in gas injection and in-situ combustion processes. Outside petroleum engineering, Gerritsen conducts collaborative research on coastal ocean simulation, yachts and boating, pterosaur flight mechanics, and the design of search algorithms. She teaches courses on energy-related topics (reservoir simulation, energy and the environment) and mathematics for engineers. She also blogs and holds public talks on energy-related topics. Gerritsen earned an MSc in applied mathematics from Delft University of Technology, and a PhD in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford.
Lawrence Goulder is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and the chair of the Economics department at Stanford University. He is also the Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology at Stanford; a Senior Fellow at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research; a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research; and a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, a non-profit environmental and natural resource research firm located in Washington, DC. Goulder's research examines the environmental and economic impacts of U.S. and international environmental policies, including policies to deal with climate change and pollution from power plants and automobiles. His work also explores the "sustainability" of consumption patterns in various countries. Goulder's work often employs a general equilibrium analytical framework that integrates the economy and the environment and links the activities of government, industry, and households. The research considers both the aggregate benefits and costs of various policies as well as the distribution of policy impacts across industries, income groups, and generations. Some of his work involves collaborations with climatologists and biologists.
Roberta Hotinski is a geoscientist turned science communicator who has worked at U.S. News & World Report, the National Science Foundation, and most recently Princeton University. As the Information Officer for Princeton University's Carbon Mitigation Initiative (CMI), Hotinski helped to develop the "stabilization wedges" game with CMI Co-Directors Stephen Pacala and Robert Socolow. Now a consultant to CMI, she has presented the wedge concept and game to audiences around the world and continues to work with the group to develop wedge-related resources for educators and the general public.
Hotinski earned her B.A. degree in Environmental Geology from Southern Methodist University, and, after a short stint as Mass Media Fellow for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at U.S. News & World Report, her Ph.D. in Geosciences from Pennsylvania State University. After completing postdoctoral work in paleoclimate modeling in Princeton’s Atmospheric and Ocean Sciences program, Hotinski accepted an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowship working in the National Science Foundation’s Office of Legislative Affairs, then joined CMI in 2003. She currently serves as a consultant to CMI and the Princeton Environmental Institute.
Mark Z. Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering, and the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford. He is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. A climate scientist, he has written numerous papers and two textbooks of two editions each on Atmospheric Modeling and Air Pollution/Climate/Clean Energy. A researcher of renewable energy resources and integration onto the grid, Jacobson has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and the Environmental Protection Agency. He also serves on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables Advisory Committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. In 2009, he and Mark DeLucchi of UC-Davis wrote a cover article in Scientific American on how to power the world with renewable energy. Jacobson earned three degrees from Stanford: BS in civil engineering, BA in economics and MS in environmental engineering. He received an MS and PhD in atmospheric science from UCLA.
Ilan Kroo is a Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He received his B.S. degree in Physics from Stanford in 1978, then continued studies at Stanford in Aeronautics, leading to a Ph.D. degree in 1983. He worked in the Advanced Aerodynamic Concepts Branch at NASA's Ames Research Center for four years before returning to Stanford as a member of the Aero/Astro faculty. Kroo's research in aerodynamics and multidisciplinary design optimization includes the study of innovative airplane concepts. He has participated in the design of UAV's, flying pterosaur replicas, Americas' Cup sailboats, and high-speed research aircraft. In addition to his research and teaching interests, Kroo is founder and chief scientist of a small software company and is an advanced cross-country hang glider pilot.
Jon Krosnick is a Professor in Communication and Political Science at Stanford University. He is a social psychologist who does research on attitude formation, change, and effects, on the psychology of political behavior, and on survey research methods. His attitude research has focused primarily on the notion of attitude strength, seeking to differentiate attitudes that are firmly crystallized and powerfully influential of thinking and action from attitudes that are flexible and inconsequential. Many of his studies in this area have focused on the amount of personal importance that an individual chooses to attach to an attitude. Krosnick’s studies have illuminated the origins of attitude importance (e.g., material self-interest and values) and the cognitive and behavioral consequences of importance in regulating attitude impact and attitude change processes. Among the topics explored by Krosnick’s political psychology research are: how policy debates affect voters’ candidate preferences, how the news media shape which national problems citizens think are most important for the nation and shape how citizens evaluate the President’s job performance, how becoming very knowledgeable about and emotionally invested in a government policy issue (such as abortion or gun control) affects people’s political thinking and participation, how people’s political views change as they move through the life-cycle from early adulthood to old age, and how the order of candidates’ names on the ballot affect voting behavior.
David Lobell is an assistant professor in Environmental Earth System Science, and a center fellow in Stanford's Program on Food Security and the Environment (FSE) at Stanford University. His research focuses on identifying opportunities to raise crop yields in major agricultural regions, with a particular emphasis on adaptation to climate change. His current projects span Africa, South Asia, Mexico, and the United States, and involve a range of tools including remote sensing, GIS, and crop and climate models.
Mark McClure is a Graduate Student in Stanford’s Department of Energy Resources Engineering whose research focuses on the modeling of hydraulic stimulation in Enhanced Geothermal Systems. He is working on optimization of stimulation design from the point of view of improving flow rate, delaying thermal breakthrough, and minimizing induced seismically. McClure is developing a model of fluid and heat flow in fractures and the mechanical and frictional processes (using rate and state friction theory) that cause slip and induced seismicity.
Michael McGehee is a professor of materials science and engineering, director of the Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics (CAMP) and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. His research interests include patterning materials at the nanometer-length scale, semiconducting polymers and organic solar cells. He has taught courses on nanotechnology, organic semiconductors, polymer science and solar cells. McGehee is a technical advisor to the companies, Nanosolar and Plextronics. His students have also founded three solar cell startup companies. He received the Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2007) and the Mohr Davidow Innovators Award (2008). McGehee earned a BA in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in materials Science from UC-Santa Barbara.
Nick Melosh is an associate professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford and the co-director of the Stanford-Chevron Program for Diamondoid Nanoscience. His research focuses on developing methods to detect and control chemical processes on the nanoscale, and to create materials that are responsive to their local environment. Melosh's research group studies molecular electronics and plasmonics, diamondoids, dynamic self-assembly of biomolecules, and lipid bilayers as nano-bio interfaces. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, Frederick E. Terman Fellowship at Stanford and the Mohr Davidow Innovators Award. Melosh earned a BS in chemistry from Harvey Mudd College and a PhD in materials science and engineering from UC-Santa Barbara. He did postdoctoral training at UCLA and Caltech.
David Mooney is the Director of the Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He oversees efforts to identify and address technical issues associated with the large-scale deployment and integration of renewable and efficiency technologies into the existing energy infrastructure. In this capacity, he leads 200 researchers conducting $100M in R&D annually. Mooney is a 24-year veteran of the renewable energy industry.
From 2007 to 2008, he was assigned by NREL to support the DOE’s office of the Assistant Secretary for Efficiency and Renewables and conducted analysis of EERE’s technology portfolio to quantify energy, environmental, and economic benefits and served as technical counsel to the Deputy Assistant Secretaries. Principal among his activities at DOE was the development of a technology-based analysis for quantifying greenhouse gas reduction potentials for the EERE technology portfolio, which were used in international climate negotiations.
During his tenure at NREL, Mooney has worked as a physicist researching photovoltaic materials, as a project manager, and as Assistant to the Director implementing laboratory strategy.
He was also the director of business development for a U.S. PV company where he was responsible for launching manufacturing and systems businesses, business planning, and raising investment capital.
Franklin "Lynn" Orr was the founding director of the Precourt Institute for Energy from 2009 until 2014, when he became the Obama administration's under secretary for science and energy at the U.S. Department of Energy. Lynn was also founding director of Stanford’s Global Climate & Energy Project from 2002 to 2008 and dean of the School of Earth Sciences, (now the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences), from 1994 to 2002. He joined Stanford's faculty in 1985.
As a scientist, Lynn researched the physical mechanisms of gas injection processes for oil recovery and for storage of greenhouse gases like CO2 in oil and gas reservoirs, deep saline aquifers and coal beds. He developed computational tools for prediction of flow performance at field scale in subsurface, heterogeneous rocks. Later, he explored the climate impact of coalbed fires and controlling them by injecting inert gases, including CO2.
Fritz Prinz is the Finmeccanica Professor of Engineering and the Robert Bosch Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford; professor of materials science and engineering; and senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. He also serves as director of the Nanoscale Prototyping Laboratory and co-director of the Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC) at Stanford. A solid-state physicist by training, Prinz leads a group of doctoral students who are addressing fundamental issues on energy conversion and storage at the nanoscale. In his laboratory, prototype fuel cells, solar cells and batteries are used to test new concepts and novel material structures using atomic layer deposition, scanning tunneling microscopy and other technologies. Prinz is also interested in learning from nature, particularly understanding the electron transport chain in plant cells. The Prinz group, in collaboration with biologist Arthur Grossman, were the first to extract electrons directly from plant cells subjected to light stimulus. Before coming to Stanford in 1994, he was on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University. Prinz earned a PhD in physics at the University of Vienna in Austria.
Ram Rajagopal is an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He leads a laboratory for creating sustainable engineering systems with renewable energy systems as one of the main focus areas. Rajagopal received his Ph.D, in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences and M.A. in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He has specialized in creating and deploying large sensing systems, and using the generated data together with novel statistical algorithms and stochastic control to achieve sustainable transportation, energy and infrastructure networks. Rajagopal likes to combine empirical work with careful analysis. In his dissertation work, he created several types of wireless sensors that measure traffic flow and road pavement conditions.
Byron Reeves is a Professor of Communication and a Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford University. His research has been the basis for a number of new media products for companies such as Microsoft, IBM, and Hewlett-Packard, in the areas of voice interfaces, automated dialogue systems and conversational agents. Reeves is currently working on the applications of multi-player game technology to learning and the conduct of serious work. He teaches courses in mass communication theory and research, with particular emphasis on psychological processing of interactive media. His research includes message processing, social cognition, and social and emotion responses to media. Reeves received a B.F.A. in graphic design from Southern Methodist University and his M.A. and a Ph.D. in communication from Michigan State University. Prior to joining Stanford in 1985, he taught at the University of Wisconsin where he was director of graduate studies and associate chair of the Mass Communication Research Center.
Stefan Reichelstein is the William R. Timken Professor in the Graduate School of Business and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. He is also an affiliate faculty in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). Reichelstein conducts research on the interface of management accounting and economics. Much of his work has addressed issues in cost- and profitability analysis, decentralization, internal pricing and performance measurement. In recent years, Reichelstein has studied the cost of reducing carbon emissions and the cost competitiveness of different energy sources. He has also introduced courses on sustainability and clean energy at Stanford. He has served on the faculty of the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley and at the University of Vienna in Austria.
Reichelstein received an MS and PhD in managerial economics from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a pre-diploma in economics at the University of Bonn in Germany.
Dan Reicher is executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford, a joint center of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School, where he also holds faculty positions. Reicher has more than 25 years of experience in energy and environmental policy, finance and technology. He was a member of President Obama’s Transition Team, assistant secretary of energy in the Clinton administration and a staff member of President Carter’s Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. Reicher came to Stanford in 2011 from Google, where he was director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives. Prior to joining Google, he was president and co-founder of New Energy Capital Corp., a private equity firm funded by the California State Teachers Retirement System and Vantage Point Venture Partners to invest in clean energy projects. He was also executive vice president of Northern Power Systems, one of the oldest renewable energy companies in the U.S. and recipient of significant venture capital investment. Reicher earned a BA in biology from Dartmouth College and a JD from Stanford Law School. He also studied at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and at MIT.
Zhi-Xun Shen is the Paul Pigott Professor in Physical Sciences at Stanford, former chief scientist at SLAC, and a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy. Shen's main research interest is in the area of condensed matter and materials physics. The questions that motivate his research are: What is the nature of quantum matter? How does complexity give rise to unusual and extreme properties? Shen focuses on the physics of "emergent phenomena", where interactions among multiple constituencies give emergence of novel properties not intrinsic to the individual components. Among his honors are the National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, the Department of Energy E.O. Lawrence Award (2009) and the Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Physics Prize from American Physical Society (2011). Shen earned a BS from Fudan University, an MS from Rutgers University and a PhD in applied physics from Stanford.
Professor Sweeney is director of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center and professor of Management Science and Engineering. His professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly in energy, natural resources, and the environment. He currently is senior fellow of: Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research; Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace; Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies; and Precourt Institute for Energy. Prof. Sweeney is a senior fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics, a council member and senior fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology, a member of the External Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Prof. Sweeney earned his B.S. degree from MIT in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in engineering-economic systems.
Mark Thurber is associate director at the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford. Launched in 2001, PESD focuses on policy frameworks for climate change mitigation, integration of renewable energy into electricity markets, the role of state-controlled oil and gas companies in global hydrocarbon markets, the global value chain for coal, and energy services for the world's poor. Thurber's current research involves the use of game-based simulations to understand and improve carbon markets, qualitative and quantitative analysis of state-owned enterprises in oil, gas, and coal, and survey-based assessments of solar home systems in East Africa. He was co-editor of and contributor to Oil and Governance, a major volume on national oil companies, and he has written several academic articles on adoption of improved biomass cookstoves. Thurber earned a BSE in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Stanford.
John P. Weyant is professor of Management Science and Engineering, director of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) and deputy director of the Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency at Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy and the Freeman-Spolgi Institute for International Studies at Stanford. Prof. Weyant earned a B.S./M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and Astronautics, M.S. degrees in Engineering Management and in Operations Research and Statistics all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Management Science with minors in Economics, Operations Research, and Organization Theory from University of California at Berkeley. He also was also a National Science Foundation post-doctoral fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. His current research focuses on analysis of global climate change policy options, energy efficiency analysis, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic planning. He currently serves as co-editor of the journal Energy Economics
Weyant has been a convening lead author or lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for chapters on integrated assessment, greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated climate impacts, and sustainable development, and most recently served as a review editor for the climate change mitigation working group of the IPCC’s forth assessment report. He was also a founder and serves as chairman of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC), a five year old collaboratory with 53 member institutions from around the world. He has been active in the U.S. debate on climate change policy through the Department of State, the Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he is a member of the California Air Resources Board’s Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee (ETAAC) which is charged with making recommendations for technology policies to help implement AB 32, The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
Weyant was awarded the US Association for Energy Economics’ 2008 Adelmann-Frankel award for unique and innovative contributions to the field of energy economics. Weyant was honored in 2007 as a major contributor to the Nobel Peace prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and in 2008 by Chairman Mary Nichols for contributions to the to the California Air Resources Board's Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee on AB 32.
Frank Wolak is director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD); the Holbrook Working Professor in Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics; and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. His fields of specialization are industrial organization and econometric theory. Wolak’s recent work focuses on methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries – telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services – and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. From 1998-2001, he was chair of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He also is a visiting scholar at the University of California Energy Institute and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Wolak earned a BA from Rice University, and an MS and PhD from Harvard University.
