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Student Spotlight: Will Coleman
Student Spotlight Directory
 ERG Master's candidate, Will Coleman.
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"Applying Energy Innovations"
Will Coleman is a second year Masters Candidate in the Energy & Resources Group (ERG), and recently completed a concurrent Masters in Business Administration at the Haas School of Business in 2006. Will’s studies focus on clean energy innovation and deployment. In addition to his studies, Will has been active in developing the student community and administrative structure for Berkeley’s growing energy initiatives.
In spring 2005, Will founded the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC), a student led organization which seeks to connect and organize the ever diversifying energy and resource community at Berkeley. BERC was developed based on the understanding that students are the working fluid of a university like Berkeley. Just as in the 1970’s when ERG was created with an emphasis on interdisciplinary solutions, Will and his fellow classmates from Haas, ERG, College of Engineering, Boalt, and College of Natural Resources founded BERC to spur even greater interaction between students of all disciplines with interests in energy and resources. The group hosts events such as monthly roundtables, sponsors interdisciplinary projects, organizes weekly research discussions, and recently put on UC Berkeley’s first Energy Symposium. The symposium was a gathering of over 400 researchers, investors, funders, faculty, and students that focused on highlighting the breadth of energy research underway at both Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.
Building on his work with BERC, Will also won the 2006 Bears Breaking Boundaries Curricular Innovation contest with fellow Haas classmate Amy Dickie. Their proposal for a new Center for Energy Innovation (CEI) at Berkeley is now being developed at Haas in partnership with ERG, College of Engineering, College of Natural Resources, and LBNL. The purpose of the center is to develop new curriculum focused on the specific challenges of applying research and commercializing new energy innovations. The center will also function as a bridge between the university and the private sector, and sponsor new student projects focused on accelerating the transfer of ideas from lab to market.
As part of CEI, Will and Amy developed a new course called “Energy, Sustainability and Business Innovation” with professors Drew Isaacs and Chris Rosen of the Haas School of Business. The course is meant to build on the foundation provided by courses like Dan Kammen’s “Energy & Society”, ERG affiliate Severin Borenstein’s “Energy Markets”, and ERG professor Alex Farrell’s “Electric Power Systems” and “Transportation Energy”. The course attracted over 45 students from all over the campus in its first incarnation.
Will also spent the last year developing a new online community for faculty, researchers, and students to compliment CEI and BERC. The community, called AccessBerkeley.com, was created in collaboration with undergraduate Leonid Kozhukh and is intended to provide a living inventory of current research, projects, and technologies at Berkeley.
 Will (far right), Naim Darghouth (ERG, center back), Dano Wiluzs and Jun Xu meet with a village chief in Mali while working on their UNIDO solar research.
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In 2005, Will received a Management of Technology UNIDO Fellowship to do research with classmates in Mali, West Africa. The team, including fellow “ERGie” Naim Darghouth and guided by ERG professor Dan Kammen, researched the potential for using fee-for-service business models to accelerate the deployment of solar power in rural villages.
Will served on UC Berkeley's Climate Protection Steering Committee (CalCAP), a group of students, faculty, staff, and administrators overseeing the university's greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy.
Prior to Berkeley, Will worked as the Legislative Director for the Renewable Energy Action Project focusing on biofuels related policy, and helped found a not-for-profit investment fund focused on financing clean energy projects that used novel technologies. In 2004, he was asked to sit on the California Energy Commission’s Biofuels Working Group under AB2076.
Will graduated magna cum laude from Harvard in 1999 with an AB in Social Studies. His undergraduate thesis was on the changing design and organization of information businesses. After graduating he spent several years in the media industry, and in 2002 he traveled to China to scout a documentary on China’s three gorges dam.
While at Berkeley, Will also worked for GE Wind in the Renewable Energy Leadership Program. Will’s masters project for ERG is on the status and feasibility of large scale production of biofuels from Algae. After ERG, he will be joining Mohr Davidow Ventures focusing on funding early stage clean energy and technology startups, which he hopes will become some of the innovators who make a more sustaining future possible.
4/2/07
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