Student
Lisa is interested in using computer science to explore issues related to the economic impacts of climate change. She has spent the past three years working at an environmental consulting firm called Industrial Economics Inc. where she leveraged data analysis, computer programming, and GIS to work on projects related to the economic affects of climate change, specifically those related to water resources, and assist policy-makers in planning paths forward. She has a B.A. from Dartmouth College in Environmental Studies, focused on environmental economics, and a Post-Baccalaureate Computer Science Minor from Tufts University.
Curriculum Vitae
Publications:
Climate change damages to Alaska public infrastructure and the economics of proactive adaptation
Climate Change Impacts on US Water Quality using two Models: HAWQS and US Basins
Estimating wildfire response costs in Alaska’s changing climate
Climate Change Impacts on Harmful Algal Blooms in U.S. Freshwater: A Screening-Level Assessment
Contact:
lrennels@berkeley.edu
Student
Will’s primary research interests involve assessing the opportunity for distributed energy resources to participate on the electric system while investigating their technical impact on the grid. Prior to joining ERG, he worked for the Brattle Group’s utilities group in Boston studying electricity markets and renewable energy. He holds a B.S. in chemical engineering and a B.A. in Plan II honors from UT Austin and worked as an undergraduate researcher in the Webber Energy Group where he performed residential building energy analyses to identify energy efficiency opportunities. Outside of his academic interests, Will enjoys playing the bassoon, hiking, and basketball.
Publications:
Community-scale residential air conditioning control for effective grid management
Using BEopt (EnergyPlus) with energy audits and surveys to predict actual residential energy usage
The practicality of distributed PV-battery systems to reduce household grid reliance
Comparative generation costs of utility-scale and residential-scale PV in Xcel energy Colorado’s service area
Cost-Benefit Analysis of ERCOT’s Future Ancillary Services (FAS) Proposal
Electrification Emerging Opportunities for Utility Growth
Contact:
LinkedIn
will.gorman5@gmail.com
Student
Salma is a first-year MS/PhD student. She is interested in electrification and renewable energy planning and integration in community and industrial contexts, as well as community-level energy access. Before ERG, Salma was living and working in Edmonton, Canada, where she graduated with a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Alberta and worked as an engineer in the extraction and upgrading sectors of the energy industry.
Contact:
salmae@berkeley.edu
Postdoctoral Scholars
Deborah Sunter received a B.S in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Cornell University. There she developed a nanosatellite mission that was successfully launched into orbit. Although fascinated by aerospace applications, the time- critical issue of global warming shifted her focus in graduate school to explore renewable energy. Specializing in computational modeling of thermo-physics in multiphase systems, she developed a novel solar absorber tube and received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. The need for a global environmental solution led her to do research abroad in both Japan and China. After receiving her doctorate, she advanced her understanding of energy policy as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy. She now is a postdoctoral fellow in the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include data science for sustainability, national energy planning, city-integrated renewable energy systems, environmental justice, and clean technology innovation.
Email: deborah_sunter@berkeley.edu
Postdocs, Visiting Scholars & ResearchersVisiting Scholars
Samuel Carrara holds a Bachelor Degree and a Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering (Major: Energy and Mechanical Plants) and a PhD in Energy and Environmental Technologies, all from the University of Bergamo, Italy.
After working as an engineer in the gas turbine field, he is now researcher at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milan, Italy. His main research interests include renewable energies, sustainable development, energy policies, climate and energy economics, advanced energy systems. His research activity is mainly carried out adopting WITCH, the Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) developed at FEEM aiming at studying the socio-economic impacts of climate change. He contributes to its development as well, mainly working on power technologies and transportation. In early 2016 he was granted a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship by the European Commission and he has currently been spending the outgoing phase as a visiting scholar at RAEL under the supervision of Prof. Daniel Kammen. His research project is “MERCURY – Modeling the European power sector evolution: low-carbon generation technologies (renewables, CCS, nuclear), the electric infrastructure and their role in the EU leadership in climate policy”. In particular, during his visiting period at UC Berkeley he will work on FEEM’s WITCH and RAEL’s SWITCH models, improving the power sector modeling in the former (system integration of variable renewable energies; electric grid; storage; electricity trade) and integrating the latter in an integrated assessment model framework.
Research Group:
Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory
Contact Information:
samuel.carrara@feem.it
Faculty
Sign up for office hours with Lara Kueppers
Lara Kueppers is an Assistant Professor in the Energy and Resources Group, with a Faculty Scientist appointment at Berkeley Lab. She is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, whose research focuses on ecological responses and feedbacks to climate change. She uses field experiments and observations, as well as models, to understand climate-ecosystem interactions in forests and agroecosystems. Dr. Kueppers is deputy director of Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments—Tropics, a long-term, multi-institution project funded by the Department of Energy, to better understand and project tropical forest feedbacks to climate change.
Previously, Dr. Kueppers was a Research Scientist in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division at Berkeley Lab and an Assistant Professor at UC Merced. She holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, and MS and BS degrees from Stanford University.
Curriculum Vitae
Website – pending
Contact
310 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720–3050
lmkueppers@berkeley.edu
Job Market Candidates
Job Market Paper:
Utility Pricing in the Prosumer Era: An Empirical Analysis of Residential Electricity Pricing in California
Dissertation
On Rate Regulation in Modern Electricity Sectors
Curriculum Vitae: CV Felipe Castro
Fields of Research:
- Applied microeconomics
- Energy and environmental economics
- Mathematical programming
- Computational optimization
Publications:
- “Optimal Rate Design in Modern Electricity Sectors” with Callaway D.S., submitted to IEEE Transactions on Power Systems
-
“A Mathematical Programming Approach to Public Utility Pricing”, with Lara J.D. and Callaway D.S., in preparation to be submitted to Operations Research.
Education:
PhD, Energy and Resources, University of California at Berkeley, expected May 2017
MA, Economics, University of California at Berkeley, May 2016
MS, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, University of California at Berkeley, December 2012
Industrial Engineering Degree, University of Chile, Chile, December 2007
BS in Industrial Engineering, University of Chile, Chile, December 2005
Honors and Awards:
- University of California at Berkeley, Summer Institute Preparing for Future Faculty, Institute Fellow, Summer 2016
- University of California at Berkeley, Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Department Fellowship, 2011-2012
- Chilean Commission for Technological and Scientific Transfer Research Scholarship, Fellowship, 2011-2015
Teaching:
Mathematical Programming II – Teaching Assistant, UC Berkeley, Spring 2012
Summer Research Experience for Trainees – Mentor of PhD Student, UC Berkeley, Summer 2016
Undergrad Student Researcher Program – Mentor of 3 Undergrad Students, UC Berkeley, Academic year 2015 – 2016
Operations Management – Teaching Assistant, University of Chile, Spring 2009
Stochastic Processes – Teaching Assistant, University of Chile, Spring 2007
References:
Prof. Duncan Callaway
Associate Professor
Dept. of Energy & Resources
310 Barrows Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
Phone: (510) 543 5288
dcal@berkeley.edu
Prof. Daniel Kammen
Professor
Dept. of Energy & Resources, and
Goldman School of Public Policy
310 Barrows Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
Phone: (510) 642 1139
kammen@berkeley.edu
Prof. Shmuel Oren
Professor
Dept. of Ind. Eng. & Op. Res.
4141 Etcheverry Hall
University of California at Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720
Phone: (510) 642 1836
oren@ieor.berkeley.edu
Contact Information:
Felipe A. Castro
Energy & Resources Group
University of California at Berkeley
Sutardja Dai Hall, 4th Floor
Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
Postdocs, Visiting Scholars & ResearchersResearchers
David Mozersky is the Founding Director of the Program on Conflict, Climate Change and Green Development. An expert on Sudan and South Sudan, he has been involved in conflict prevention efforts in Africa since 2001, with a specific interest in mediation, negotiation and peace processes. He has worked with the International Crisis Group, the African Union High-Level Panel on the Sudans, and Humanity United, among others. He has written extensively about the conflicts and peacemaking efforts in the Horn of Africa, and has testified or presented before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, the Canadian Parliament, and South Sudanese Parliament. David has authored and co-authored more than two dozen International Crisis Group reports and briefing papers, and his writing has appeared in the Harvard International Review, International Herald-Tribune, Financial Times-Europe, and other publications.
Contact:
dmozersky@berkeley.edu
Postdocs, Visiting Scholars & ResearchersPostdoctoral Scholars
Mingxi Liu is currently an NSERC Postdoc Fellow working at the Energy Modeling, Analysis & Control Group (EMAC) in Energy & Resources Group (ERG) with Dr. Duncan Callaway. He is particularly interested in designing and implementing advanced and tractable control algorithms in the context of Smart Grid/City. He is currently working on aggregation and charging control of electric vehicles to realize various demand response functions. He strongly believes that a tiny change from each of us, if aggregated, does matter.
Before joining UC Berkeley, Mingxi obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Victoria, Canada in 2016. In his Ph.D. dissertation, he investigated the potential of and developed tractable methodologies for residential thermostatically controlled loads and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles providing demand response services. In 2012, he received his M.A.Sc. degree from University of Victoria with the thesis studying the optimal design of combined cooling, heating, and power systems. Mingxi received B.Eng. degree in Control Sciences and Engineering from Harbin Institute of Technology, China in 2010.
Mingxi is an active reviewer for many leading journals, including Proceedings of the IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Power Systems, Power and Energy Society Letters, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technologies, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, etc. He’s currently serving as an Associate Editor of 2017 IEEE International Conference on Control and Automation.
Mingxi’s full publication list can be found at here.
Postdocs, Visiting Scholars & ResearchersVisiting Scholars
Christoph Clar is a political scientist whose work combines approaches from political and environmental science, social geography and natural resource governance. After his graduation from the University of Vienna (Doctoral thesis on the functions of territory for the capitalist organization of society), he started working at the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy (University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna). In addition he is teaching at the University of Vienna (Department of Development Studies, Department of Political Science). His research interests are water resources management, environmental and climate politics. He is a visiting scholar at the Energy and Resources Group within the Fulbright Program. His current project is on the ‘Politics of scale’ in transboundary water resources management and compares river basins in the US and Europe.
Links:
Contact:
christoph.clar@berkeley.edu
christoph.clar@boku.ac.at