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 2012 - Speaker Bios
Carrie Armel is a research associate at Stanford’s Precourt Energy Efficiency Center (PEEC), where she investigates the diverse ways in which an understanding of human behavior can lead to improvements in energy efficiency. For example, the application of behavioral principles can produce significant energy reductions through interventions implemented at the policy, technology, built environment, media/marketing and organizational/community levels. Armel develops specific energy efficiency interventions that apply behavioral and design principles, and develops measures to evaluate the efficacy of such interventions. She is project director of the Stanford ARPA-E Sensor and Behavior Initiative, which aims to leverage sensor data, like those from smart meters, with behavioral techniques to achieve widespread energy savings. Armel co-conceived the annual Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) Conference; oversees PEEC’s Bibliographic Database and Website; and teaches courses on behavior and energy at Stanford. She earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UC-San Diego and did postdoctoral work in neuro-economics and also behavioral epidemiology at Stanford.
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.
Will Chueh is an assistant professor of materials science and engineering, and a center fellow of the Precourt Institute of Energy at Stanford. His lab focuses on thermally enhanced photo-electrochemical water splitting using semiconductor-based photoelectrical chemical cells (PECs) to extract hydrogen from H2O. His team is designing a new class of PECs that will operate at temperatures significantly above room temperature. Prior to joining Stanford in 2012, Chueh was a Distinguished Truman Fellow at Sandia National Laboratories. He received` the Caltech Demetriades-Tsafka-Kokkalis Prize in Energy (2012), the Josephine de Karman Fellowship (2009) and the American Ceramics Society Diamond Award (2008). Chueh earned three degrees from Caltech: BS in applied physics, and MS and PhD in materials science.
Craig Criddle is a professor of environmental engineering & science, and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. His research focuses on environmental biotechnology, including large interdisciplinary field studies of microbial ecology in bioreactors and microbial transformations of persistent contaminants. Current projects include DNA-monitoring of microbial community structure at biological wastewater treatment plants, and development of membrane bioreactors for energy recovery and nutrient removal. To promote science literacy, Criddle collaborated with cartoonist Larry Gonick on The Cartoon Guide to Chemistry. Criddle earned BAs in civil and environmental engineering and Spanish at Utah State University, and a PhD in environmental engineering at Stanford.
Hongjie Dai is the J.G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor in Chemistry at Stanford. His group’s research interfaces with chemistry, physics, materials science and biological and medical sciences. The Dai group has made advances to the basic science of carbon nanotube and graphene, with potential applications in the areas of nanoelectronics, nanobiotechnolgy, nanomedicine, energy storage and catalysis. Recently, the Dai group demonstrated how nanotechnology could be used to design new, low-cost electrodes` in fuel cells and metal-air batteries. They also showed how carbon nanotubes and graphene could dramatically improve the charge/discharge rate of the Edison nickel-iron battery 1,000-fold. Dai joined the Stanford faculty in 1997. He earned a BS in physics from TsingHua University in China, an MS in applied sciences from Columbia University and a PhD in applied physics/physical chemistry from Harvard University.
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.
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.
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.
Roland Horne is the Thomas Davis Barrow Professor of Earth Sciences, professor of energy resources engineering and deputy director at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. He also serves as director of the Stanford Geothermal Program in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. He was chair of the Department of Petroleum Engineering at Stanford from 1995 to 2006. Much of Horne’s research focuses on geothermal energy, particularly well test interpretation, production optimization and tracer analysis of fractured geothermal reservoirs. He is an honorary member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. He is president of the International Geothermal Association and a past member of the IGA board of directors. Horne was technical program chairman of the World Geothermal Congress in Turkey (2005), Bali (2010) and will chair the Melbourne congress in 2015. He is a founder of the IGA online database of geothermal conference papers.
Harold Hwang is a professor of applied physics and of photon science at Stanford and SLAC. Hwang’s specialty is materials physics. His area of focus is complex oxides – materials that have similar crystal structures but differing properties (insulators and semiconductors, for example). Having a common crystalline structure lends itself to layering, which could lead to creating entirely new crystal structures for electronics, sensing and energy applications. Prior to his appointment at Stanford/SLAC, Hwang was on the faculties of the University of Tokyo and Kyoto University. In 2008, he was awarded the 22nd Japan IBM Science Prize in Physics. At MIT, he earned a BS in physics, and a BS and MS in electrical engineering. He holds a PhD in physics from Princeton University.
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.
Drew Jones is co-director of Climate Interactive (CI). He is a system dynamics modeler, facilitator, trainer and designer of simulation-based learning environments. Jones has focused his practice on helping individuals and teams solve problems by applying system dynamics modeling and systems thinking in the areas of corporate sustainability, diabetes and public health, global climate change, and land use policy. He and his team at CI and MIT Sloan developed C-ROADS, a user-friendly climate simulation now used by U.S. federal officials and analysts for the Chinese Government. Jones previously worked at the Sustainability Institute and at the Rocky Mountain Institute. He earned a BA at Dartmouth College and an MS in technology and policy at MIT.
Don Kennedy is Stanford University President, Emeritus; Bing Professor of Environmental Science, Emeritus; and senior fellow, emeritus, at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, and at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He recently served as editor-in-chief of Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His research focuses on trans-boundary environmental problems, such as major land-use changes, economically driven alterations in agricultural practice and global climate change. Kennedy joined the Stanford faculty in 1960. From 1980 to 1992, he was university president. From 1977-79, he was commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. He earned an AB and PhD in biology from Harvard University
Tony Kovscek is a professor of energy resources engineering at Stanford. His academic interests center around coupled heat and reactive flows in porous media, as well as the efficient use of energy. In collaboration with his research group, he examines the physics of transport and reaction in porous media at scales that vary from the pore to the laboratory to the reservoir. The organizing themes are flow imaging and image analysis to delineate the mechanisms of multiphase flow (oil, water and gas) in porous media, and the synthesis of models from experimental, theoretical and field data. Physical observations, obtained mainly from laboratory and field measurements, are interwoven with theory. Kovscek received a Distinguished Achievement Award for Faculty from the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE), and the SPE Western North America Region Technical Achievement Award. Kovscek is the director of SUPRI-A Enhanced Oil Recovery Consortium and co-director of the Stanford Center for Carbon Storage (SCCS) in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. He holds BS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Washington and the University of California-Berkeley, respectively.
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.
Paul McIntyre is professor of materials science and engineering, senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy, and director of the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) at Stanford. He is also faculty co-director of Stanford’s Energy and Environment Affiliates program. McIntyre leads a research team of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, visiting scientists and consulting professors who perform basic research on nanostructured inorganic materials for applications in electronics and energy technologies. His work focuses on metal oxide/semiconductor interfaces, ultrathin metal oxide films, atomic layer deposition and semiconductor nanowires. His research team synthesizes materials, characterizes their structures and compositions with a variety of advanced microscopies and spectroscopies, studies the passivation of their interfaces, and measures functional properties of devices. Their research is supported by several U.S. government agencies and major semiconductor manufacturers. McIntyre holds eight U.S. patents and has received two IBM Faculty Awards, a Charles Lee Powell Foundation Faculty Scholarship and an SRC Inventor Recognition award. He received a DSCi from MIT.
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.
Amit Narayan is the Founder and CEO of AutoGrid, Inc., a company providing a new generation of software analytics for the smart grid. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Director of Smart Grid Research in Modeling & Simulation at Stanford University, where he continues to lead an interdisciplinary project related to modeling, optimization and control of the electricity grid and associated electricity markets. Previously, Amit was the vice president of products at Magma Design Automation, Inc., where he led the product development and product management teams responsible for Magma's flagship product in the design implementation area. Over fifty percent of all semiconductor chips used in consumer electronic devices such as smart phones, blue-ray players and video games are designed using products developed his team at Magma. Amit earned his PhD from the University of California-Berkeley.
Roz Naylor is the director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, the William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Woods Institute of the Environment, and a professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford. Her research focuses on the environmental and equity dimensions of intensive food production systems, and the food security dimensions of low-input systems. She has been involved in several field-level research projects around the world and has published widely on issues related to climate impacts on agriculture, biofuels, aquaculture and livestock production, food price volatility, and food policy analysis. At Stanford, Naylor teaches courses on the world food economy, food and security, human-environment interactions, and aquaculture science and policy. She is a fellow in the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program in Environmental Sciences and a Pew Fellow in Conservation and the Environment. She serves on the scientific board of the Beijer Institute of Ecological Economics in Stockholm and on the advisory panel for the African Human Development Report at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Naylor received a BA in economics and environmental studies from the University of Colorado, an MSc in economics from the London School of Economics and a PhD in applied economics from Stanford.
Jens Nørskov is the Leland T. Edwards Professor of Engineering, and professor of chemical engineering of photon science at Stanford and SLAC. He is also director of the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis at SLAC. Nørskov’s research aims at developing theoretical methods and concepts to understand and predict properties of materials. The aim is to understand which surface properties determine their chemical activity and to use that insight, in combination with large-scale computations, to design new catalytic surfaces and nano-structures. Applications are primarily in energy transformations, including (photo-) electrochemical water splitting, CO2 reduction, nitrogen reduction and syngas reactions. Nørskov’s recent honors include the Giuseppe Parravano Award (2011), the Alwin Mittasch Award (2009) and the Gabor A. Somorjai Award from the American Chemical Society (2009). He earned an MSc in physics and chemistry, and a PhD in theoretical physics from Aarhus University in Denmark.
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.
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.
Burton Richter is director emeritus of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences, emeritus. Among his many awards are the Nobel Prize in Physics (1976), the E.O. Lawrence Medal of the Department of Energy (1976) and the Enrico Fermi Award presented by President Obama in 2012. Burt's book, “Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century,” received the 2011 science book award from the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In 2007, he received the American Association for the Advancement of Science's Philip Hauge Abelson Prize for his world-class contributions to research, and his unrelenting efforts to advance science and promote its responsible use in shaping public policy. Burt has served on many advisory committees to governments, laboratories and universities, including the U.S. Secretary of Energy Advisory Board and the Nuclear Energy Task Force. He also chaired the National Research Council's board on physics and astronomy. Richter earned a bachelor's degree and PhD from 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.
George Shultz is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution and advisory council chair of the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. He leads Hoover’s Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy, which addresses energy policy in the U.S. and its effects on domestic and international political priorities, particularly national security. Shultz is one of a handful of people who have served as U.S. secretary of state, labor and Treasury. In 1970, he was appointed the first director of the newly formed Office of Management and Budget. In 1989, Shultz was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Other honors include the Seoul Peace Prize (1992), and the Reagan Distinguished American Award (2002). Shultz earned a BA in economics at Princeton University and a PhD in industrial economics at MIT.
Alfred Spormann is a professor of chemical engineering, and of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. His laboratory seeks to understand the molecular basis of unusual microbial reactions and processes. A particular focus is on understanding the molecular science and engineering of direct electron uptake from cathodes by microbes as it is relevant for bioenergy production and storage. Another focus is on metabolic interactions of complex microbial communities in the intestine and their role in diseases. Spormann is recipient of a Terman Award from the Stanford School of Engineering (1995), a National Science Foundation CAREER Award (1998) and the Charles Lee Powell Research Award (2000). He earned a PhD from the Philipps-University Marburg, and was a postdoctoral researcher in biochemistry at the University of Minnesota-Minneapolis and at 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.
Jennifer Wilcox is an assistant professor of energy resources engineering and an affiliate faculty member in the Emmet Interdisciplinary Program for the Environment and Resources (E-IPER) at Stanford. She also heads the Clean Conversion Laboratory in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. With a background in kinetics, catalysis and chemical modeling, Wilcox investigates technologies associated with making energy production from carbon-based sources cleaner –for example, using quantum mechanical modeling coupled with direct experimentation to understand the transport and fate of heavy metals (mercury, arsenic, and selenium) released from coal combustion or gasification processes. Additional research efforts include sorbent testing for carbon capture, adsorption studies of CO2 on coal and gas shales, and membrane design for nitrogen and hydrogen separation processes. She received the NSF Career award (2005) and the Army Research Office Young Investigator award (2009). Wilcox earned a BA in mathematics from Wellesley College, and an MA in physical chemistry and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona. Jennifer has also recently authored the first textbook on Carbon Capture in 2012.
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.
Mark Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page Professor of Geophysics and director of the Stress and Crustal Mechanics Group in the Department of Geophysics at Stanford. He conducts research on in situ stress, fault mechanics and reservoir geomechanics. Zoback served on the National Academy of Energy committee investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and on the U.S. Secretary of Energy’s committee on shale gas development and environmental protection. He was also a principal investigator on the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD), a research project that drilled through the San Andreas Fault to study seismicity at depth. Zoback’s awards include the Emil Wiechert Medal of the German Geophysical Society (2006) and the Walter H. Bucher Medal from the American Geophysical Union (2008). He earned three geophysics degrees: a BS from the University of Arizona, and an MS and PhD from Stanford.
Cathy Zoi has spent 30 years in the energy and environmental sectors at the nexus between technology and policy. She served in the Obama Administration’s Department of Energy (DOE) as Assistant Secretary and Acting Under Secretary, overseeing over $30 billion in energy investments. In the private sector, Cathy has been an energy investor and operating executive, with bases in both the US and Australia. She was the founding CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection established by former Vice President Al Gore. In the early 1990s, Cathy pioneered the Energy Star program and was Chief of Staff for environmental policy in the Clinton White House. Cathy has a BS in Geology from Duke and an MS in Engineering from Dartmouth.
