Adrienne L. Hollis
Adrienne Hollis is both an environmental toxicologist and an environmental attorney. She has more than 20 years of experience in the environmental justice and public health arena. First, by working in the federal system as a section chief at the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, where she worked on developing public health assessments for Superfund sites. Later, she served as an associate professor in the Institute of Public Health at Florida A&M University, where she developed the Environmental and Occupational Health track. After law school, she worked as a law clerk in both the New Jersey District Court and the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. Dr. Hollis has also worked as a project attorney at Earthjustice and as the Director of Federal Policy at WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Currently, she is the Senior Climate Justice and Health Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). In that position, she works at the intersection of public health, environmental justice and climate change and leads the work on methods for accessing and documenting the health impacts of climate change on communities of color and other traditionally disenfranchised groups. She works with environmental justice communities to identify priority health concerns related to climate change and other environmental assaults and evaluate climate and energy policy approaches for their ability to effectively address climate change and benefit underserved communities. She is a professorial lecturer at the Milken School of Public Health in the Environmental and Occupational Health Program and an adjunct professor of Law at New York University Law School where she co-teaches an Environmental Justice seminar.
Jesse Jenkins
Jesse Jenkins is an assistant professor at Princeton University with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. He is an energy systems engineer with a focus on the rapidly evolving electricity sector, including the transition to zero-carbon resources, the proliferation of distributed energy resources, and the role of electricity in economy-wide decarbonization. Jesse’s research focuses on improving and applying optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate low-carbon energy technologies, policy options, and robust decisions under deep uncertainty. Jesse completed a Ph.D. in engineering systems and M.S. in technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.S. in computer and information science at the University of Oregon. He worked previously as a postdoctoral Environmental Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard University Center for the Environment, a researcher at the MIT Energy Initiative, the Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute, and a Policy and Research Associate at Renewable Northwest.
Roxanne Johnson
Roxanne Johnson established and currently directs the research department at the BlueGreen Alliance (BGA), a national coalition of labor unions and environmental groups working to build a stronger, fairer economy. In her current role, she leads BGA’s research efforts to understand job creation opportunities in the clean economy. Her team is responsible for conducting manufacturing and policy research in industries such as wind and solar energy, energy efficiency, advanced vehicles, and infrastructure. Her previous work at the Great Plains Institute focused on communicating model results showing potential impacts of energy and transportation policy. Ms. Johnson earned a B.S. in Mathematics and Environmental Studies from Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin. She also earned an M.S. in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Timothy C. Lieuwen
Timothy C. Lieuwen, NAE, serves as executive director of the Strategic Energy at the Institute at Georgia Technology. He is also a Regents’ Professor and the David S. Lewis, Jr. Chair in the School of Aerospace Engineering. He is also founder and chief technology officer of TurbineLogic, an analytics firm working in the gas turbine industry. Dr. Lieuwen is an international authority on gas turbine technologies, both from a research and development perspective and from a field/operational perspective. He has authored or edited four books, including the textbook Unsteady Combustor Physics. He has also authored 350 other publications and received four patents, all of which are licensed to the gas turbine industry. He is editor-in-chief of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIAA) Progress book series. He is also past chair of the Combustion, Fuels, and Emissions Technical Committee of American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and has served as associate editor of Combustion Science and Technology, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and AIAA Journal of Propulsion and Power. He is a fellow of ASME and AIAA, and a recipient of the AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award, ASME’s George Westinghouse Gold Medal, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and various best paper awards. Board positions include appointment by the Secretary of Energy to the National Petroleum Counsel, board of governors of Oak Ridge National Lab, and board member of the ASME International Gas Turbine Institute. He has also served on a variety of federal review and advisory committees. He holds a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech. He has served on the Academies’ Review of NASA Test Flight Capabilities and the Decadal Survey of Aeronautics.
Vivian E. Loftness
Vivian Loftness is a University Professor and former Head of the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. She is an internationally renowned researcher, author, and educator with over thirty years of focus on environmental design and sustainability, advanced building systems integration, climate and regionalism in architecture, and design for performance in the workplace of the future. She has served on ten National Academy of Science (NAS) panels, the NAS Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment and has given four Congressional testimonies on sustainability. Vivian is recipient of the National Educator Honor Award from the American Institute of Architecture Students and the Sacred Tree Award from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). She received her B.S. and M.S. in Architecture from MIT and served on the National Boards of the USGBC, AIA Committee on the Environment, Green Building Alliance, Turner Sustainability, and the Global Assurance Group of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. She is a registered architect and a fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
Carlos E. Martín
Carlos Martín leads the Urban Institute’s Built Environment practice area, including Urban’s climate adaptation research agenda, its studies on housing and migration in relation to climate for the U.S. National Academies’ Gulf Research Program, and the multi-year, global evaluation of the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities. He was also part of a core team of researchers looking at the policy and practical methods for assessing equity in energy programs. Trained as an architect, construction engineer, and historian of technology, Dr. Martín connects the bricks and mortar of housing to social and economic outcomes of occupants, especially at the intersections of environment, energy, and housing with racial equity and income disparity. For over 20 years, he has led evaluation, research, and policy analysis for federal, state, and civil-sector entities in the fields of energy efficiency, housing construction and design, climate mitigation and adaptation, and energy and environmental justice. Before Urban, Martín was assistant staff vice president for construction codes and standards at the National Association of Home Builders, SRP professor for energy and the environment at Arizona State University, and coordinator for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing. He received his BSAD in architecture from MIT and MEng and PhD in civil and environmental engineering from Stanford.
Michael A. Méndez
Michael Méndez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. He previously was the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies and Associate Research Scientists at the Yale School of the Environment. Dr. Méndez has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, and as vice chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. In 2021, California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Dr. Méndez to the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board. The board regulates water quality in a region of 11 million people. During his time at UC Irvine and Yale, he has contributed to state and national research policy initiatives, including serving as an advisor to a California Air Resources Board member, and as a participant of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s workgroup on “Climate Vulnerability and Social Science Perspectives.” Dr. Méndez is a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Environmental Change and Society (BECS), and is on the board of directors of the social justice nonprofit, Alliance for a Better Community. He also serves as a panel reviewer for the National Academies of Sciences’ Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP). Dr. Méndez holds three degrees in environmental planning and policy, including a PhD from UC Berkeley's Department of City and Regional Planning, and a graduate degree from MIT. His research on the intersection of climate change and communities of color has been featured in national publications including Urban Land (published by the Urban Land Institute); the Natural Resources Defense Fund Annual Report; the American Planning Association’s Planning Magazine; Green 2.0: Leadership at Work; USA Today; and Fox Latino News. His new book “Climate Change from the Streets,” published through Yale University Press (2020), is an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy.
Clark A. Miller
Clark A. Miller is Professor and Director of the Center for Energy & Society at Arizona State University. He leads sustainability research for the Quantum Energy and Sustainable Solar Technologies Engineering Research Center. He also serves as a member of the steering committee of LightWorks, ASU’s university-wide sustainable energy initiative. Dr. Miller’s current research focuses on the human and social dimensions of energy transitions, including the social value of distributed renewable energy systems; strategies for addressing poverty and inequality through energy innovation; the organization of urban and regional energy transitions; and the design and governance of solar energy futures. He is an author or editor of eight books, including The Weight of Light (2019), Designing Knowledge (2018), The Handbook of Science & Technology Studies (2016), The Practices of Global Ethics (2015), Science and Democracy (2015), Nanotechnology, the Brain, and the Future (2013), Arizona’s Energy Future (2011), and Changing the Atmosphere (2001). He has published extensively in the fields of energy policy, science and technology policy, the role of science in democratic governance and international relations, the governance of emerging technologies, and the design of knowledge systems for improved decision-making. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Cornell University.
Jonathan A. Patz
Jonathan Patz is director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a professor and the John P. Holton Chair of Health and the Environment with appointments in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Population Health Sciences. For 15 years, Patz served as a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC)—the organization that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. He also co-chaired the health expert panel of the U.S. National Assessment on Climate Change, a report mandated by the U.S. Congress. In addition to directing the university-wide Global Health Institute, Patz has faculty appointments in the Nelson Institute, Center for Sustainability & the Global Environment (SAGE) and the Department of Population Health Sciences. He also directs the NSF sponsored Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment (CHANGE). Patz is double board-certified, earning medical boards in both Occupational/Environmental Medicine and Family Medicine and received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University (1987) and his Master of Public Health degree (1992) from Johns Hopkins University.
Keith Paustian
Keith Paustian is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Soil and Crop Sciences and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University. A major focus of his work involves modeling, field measurement and development of assessment tools for soil carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. He has published over 380 journal articles and book chapters. Professional service activities include Coordinating Lead Author for the IPCC 2006 National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Methods and the IPCC 2003 Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and two National Academy of Science committees (in 2010-11 and 2018-19) related to land use, greenhouse gases and climate change mitigation. He served as a member of the US Carbon Cycle Science Steering Group, which provides expert input to Federal Agencies involved in climate and carbon cycle research. He also served on the Voluntary Carbon Standard Steering Committee for Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) and on numerous other national and international committees involving climate and carbon cycle research. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, recipient of the Soil Science Society of America’s Outstanding Research Award in 2015, and 2019 winner of the Global Foodshot Groundbreaker Award.
William Pizer
Billy Pizer is a Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Policy Engagement at Resources for the Future. He was previously the Susan B. King Professor and senior associate dean for faculty and research at the Sanford School of Public Policy and faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, both at Duke University. His current research examines how we value the future benefits of climate change mitigation, how environmental regulation and climate policy can affect production costs and competitiveness, and how the design of market-based environmental policies can address the needs of different stakeholders. Dr. Pizer has been actively involved in the creation of an environmental program at Duke Kunshan University in China, a collaborative venture between Duke University, Wuhan University, and the city of Kunshan. Before Duke, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 2008 to 2011, overseeing Treasury’s role in the domestic and international environment and energy agenda of the United States. Prior to that, he was a researcher at Resources for the Future for more than a decade. Dr. Pizer has written more than 50 peer-reviewed publications, books, and articles, and holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in economics from Harvard University and a B.S. in physics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Varun Rai
Varun Rai is an Associate Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs and in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, where he directs the Energy Systems Transformation Research Group (aka “Rai Group”). His interdisciplinary research – delving with issues at the interface of energy systems, complex systems, decision science, and public policy – focuses on studying how the interactions between the underlying social, behavioral, economic, technological, and institutional components of the energy system impact the diffusion of energy technologies. Over the last 15 years, his research has applied various analytical lenses to study technologies and policies in carbon capture and storage (CCS), fuels cells, oil & gas, plug-in hybrid vehicles (PEVs), and solar photovoltaics (PV). He has presented at several important forums, including the United States Senate Briefings, Global Intelligent Utility Network Coalition, and Global Economic Symposium, and his research group’s work has been discussed in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Bloomberg News, among other venues. He was a Global Economic Fellow in 2009 and holds the Elspeth Rostow Centennial Fellowship at the LBJ School. During 2013-2015 he was a commissioner for the vertically-integrated electric utility Austin Energy. In 2016 the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management (APPAM) awarded him the David N. Kershaw Award and Prize, which “was established to honor persons who, at under the age of 40, have made a distinguished contribution to the field of public policy analysis and management.” He received The Eyes of Texas Excellence Award, also in 2016, for making “noteworthy contributions to the UT community.” Dr. Rai has held the position of the Associate Dean for Research for the LBJ School since September 2017. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.
Ed Rightor
Ed Rightor is the director of the Industrial Program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). In this role Ed develops and leads the strategic vision for the industrial sector, shapes the research and policy agenda, and convenes stakeholders to accelerate energy efficiency and reductions of GHGs. Prior to joining ACEEE, held several leadership roles at Dow Chemical during his 31 year career. Through 2017, he served as the director of strategic projects in Dow’s Environmental Technology Center. In this role he worked with Dow businesses, operations and corporate groups, to reduce air emissions, waste, freshwater intake, and energy use. He also served as the facilitator of Dow’s Corporate Water Strategy Team, led teams to establish and pursue Dow’s 2025 Sustainability Goals, including the first ever water goal. Working across global industrial associations, he spearheaded a roadmap for the chemical industry on paths to reduce energy and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In prior roles, he developed GHG and energy reduction options across Dow’s global operations and pursued project funding and implementation. Earlier, he started a new market facing business in the energy sector, led cross-functional teams to optimize processes (six sigma), pioneered technology that led to new materials development, and led teams to troubleshoot production challenges. He earned a doctorate in chemistry from Michigan State University and a bachelor of science in chemistry from Marietta College
Patricia Romero-Lankao
Patricia "Paty" Romero-Lankao joined NREL's Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences in 2018 as a senior research scientist in joint appointment with the University of Chicago's Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, where she is a research fellow. Previously, she was a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Throughout her career, she has developed a considerable body of highly regarded sociological and transdisciplinary research resulting in several research grants and some 135 peer-reviewed publications. Her work primarily focuses on crucial intersections among energy and water systems, mobility, and the built environment in cities around the world. She has developed many innovative methods (e.g., clustering techniques and indices) to examine how inequalities in income, education, and decision-making power across populations relate to the distribution of benefits or negative impacts associated with access to transportation, energy, and related technological innovations (e.g., distributional injustice). She has also developed elicitation tools (e.g., focus groups, fuzzy cognitive maps) to examine the energy and mobility needs of women, elders, the working class, people of color, and other underrepresented groups to inform understanding and management of these needs (e.g., procedural justice). Dr. Romero-Lankao has extensive experience as a sociologist working across disciplines and at the science-policy interface in the United States, Mexico, and many urban locations internationally. Her leadership of international research has garnered a good deal of recognition—she served as co-leading author in a working group contributing to the Nobel Prize-winning Fourth Assessment Report published by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She also serves on the editorial board of Earth's Future and several other journals and on the steering committee of the U.S. Carbon Cycle Science Program.
Devashree Saha
Devashree Saha is a Senior Associate at WRI United States. In this role, she supports state, city, and federal policymakers as they work to develop and implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support clean energy. This includes analysis of the economics of climate action, work to develop a new framework for climate federalism that supports and strengthens the partnership between city, state, and federal governments as they work to drive deep emissions reductions, and efforts to advance a fair and equitable transition to a low-carbon economy. Prior to joining WRI, Dr. Saha led the Council of State Government’s (CSG) energy and environmental policy work where she was responsible for directing research and providing policy analysis and technical assistance to state legislators and executive branch officials. Before joining CSG, Dr. Saha worked at the Brookings Institution where her research focused on a wide array of clean energy topics, including examining clean energy innovation trends at the U.S. sub-national level, identifying promising clean energy financing mechanisms, and estimating the employment size, nature and spatial geography of the U.S. clean economy. Earlier in her career, she worked for the National Governors Association, providing governors and their staff with data and guidance on best practices affecting the energy sector. Over her career, she has authored several publications on clean energy that have informed state and city policymaking. Dr. Saha holds a Ph.D in public policy from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree in political science from Purdue University.
Kelly Sims Gallagher
Kelly Sims Gallagher is Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. She directs the Climate Policy Lab and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher. From June 2014-September 2015 she served in the Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Senior China Advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change office at the U.S. State Department. Gallagher is a member of the board of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and she also serves on the board of the Energy Foundation. Broadly, she focuses on energy innovation and climate policy. She specializes in how policy spurs the development and deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies, domestically and internationally. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the author of Titans of the Climate (The MIT Press 2018), The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China (MIT Press 2014), China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development (The MIT Press 2006), and dozens of other publications.
Esther S. Takeuchi
Esther Takeuchi, NAE, is a professor at Stony Brook University and a chief scientist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. She is an energy storage expert who led efforts to invent and refine the lifesaving lithium/silver vanadium oxide (Li/SVO) battery technology, utilized in the majority of today's implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs). Takeuchi's work was conducted during 22 years at Greatbatch, Inc., a major supplier of pacemaker and ICD batteries. ICD batteries have high energy density with the ability to support intermittent high-power pulses. In addition, they have a long life, are safe, and durable. In Takeuchi's innovation, the cathodes employ two metals, silver and vanadium, rather than just one, allowing for more energy. In addition, the Li/SVO chemistry lets the ICD monitor the level of discharge, allowing it to predict end of service in a reliable manner. Today, over 300,000 ICDs are implanted every year. Raised in Ohio, Takeuchi received her B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. She joined Greatbatch, Inc. in 1984, and in 2007, she joined the University at Buffalo. Takeuchi has received over 140 U.S. patents and is the recipient of the 2008 National Medal of Technology and Innovation.
Susan F. Tierney
Susan Tierney, a Senior Advisor at Analysis Group, is an expert on energy economics, regulation, and policy, particularly in the electric and gas industries. She consults to businesses, government agencies, foundations, tribes, environmental groups, and other organizations on energy markets, economic and environmental regulation and strategy, and climate-related energy policies. She has participated as an expert in civil litigation cases, regulatory proceedings before state and federal agencies, and business consulting engagements. Previously, she served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy at the U.S. Department of Energy, and was the Secretary for Environmental Affairs in Massachusetts, Commissioner at the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and Executive Director of the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Council. She co-authored the energy chapter of the National Climate Assessment, and serves on the boards of ClimateWorks Foundation, Barr Foundation, Energy Foundation, Resources for the Future, and World Resources Institute. She taught at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and at the University of California at Irvine, and has lectured at Harvard University, University of Chicago, Yale University, New York University, Tufts University, Northwestern University, and University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. and master’s in regional planning at Cornell University and her B.A. at Scripps College.
William Walker
William "Reed" Walker is the Transamerica Professor of Business and Public Policy and Economics at UC Berkeley. His research explores the social costs of environmental externalities such as air pollution and how regulations to limit these externalities contribute to gains and/or losses to society. He is the faculty co-director of UC Berkeley’s Opportunity Lab - Climate and Environment Initiative. He is also a research associate at the Energy Institute at Berkeley and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was a recipient of the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and the IZA Young Labor Economist Award. His work has been supported by the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation. He received his PhD in economics from Columbia University.
