ERG’s sixty plus graduate students are geographically and ethnically diverse. About half are in the masters-degree program and half in the PhD program. The students come from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds in engineering, natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities; the characteristics they have in common are an ability to cross disciplinary boundaries, an interest in the complex problems at the interface of technology and society, and the intellectual credentials to succeed in a rigorous academic program. Graduates of the program are employed across the United States and around the world in governmental and international agencies, legislative staff positions, national laboratories, public and private utilities, other energy and resource companies, consulting firms, public-interest organizations, and universities.
Students
Students

Gbemisola Akinsipe
MS, PhD
Gbemi is a MS/PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group. Her primary research revolves around electricity systems planning and markets in Nigeria and West Africa with a focus on ... Continue Reading »

Kelsey Alford-Jones
MA
Exploring Linkages Between Development Finance and Socio-Environmental Conflict: A Case Study of IDB Lending to Institutions for Energy and the Environment in Guatemala (MA ’20) Kelsey is a PhD candidate, ... Continue Reading »

Ryan Andresen
MS
Pronouns: he/they Ryan is interested in measuring the impacts of wildfire mitigation policies in vulnerable communities across California. He is particularly interested in researching a holistic framework that incorporates the ... Continue Reading »

Portia Awuah
MS
Portia is a MS student in the Energy and Resources Group. She is interested in extending energy access to areas without electricity. As an Electrical and Electronics engineering bachelor’s degree ... Continue Reading »
Ella Belfer
MA
Assessing Transitions in Overlying Rights to California’s Groundwater Basins (MA ’20) An interest in the human dimensions of climate change – in particular, in understanding the dynamics of power and ... Continue Reading »

Dennis Best
MS, PhD
Dennis has focused his career on technology and sustainability policy in emerging and developing economies. His research interests include technology and innovation policy and impacts to resource and rural development, ... Continue Reading »
- Agriculture
- China
- climate
- economics
- energy
- energy policy
- environmental markets and design
- geospatial analysis
- industrial ecology
- Innovation systems
- rural development
- South East Asia and Latin America
- technology policy

Anna Brockway
MS, PhD
Anna Brockway is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. She holds master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Energy & Resources. Anna studies how our ... Continue Reading »
- climate adaptation
- economics
- electricity grid
- electricity markets
- energy
- Energy System Modeling
- renewable energy integration
- renewable energy policy
- solar energy
- utility business models

Colette Brown
MS
Colette’s research and interests focus on using remote sensing and data science to better explore and predict changes to the arctic. She currently works for Dr. Margaret Torn and Dr. ... Continue Reading »

Bodie Cabiyo
MA, PhD
Bodie uses interdisciplinary approaches to investigate nature-based solutions to climate change. He currently studies how policy and innovative technology can enable carbon-beneficial forest management. This work bridges industrial ecology, forest ... Continue Reading »

Nica Campbell
MS
Nica Campbell is an MS candidate at Energy and Resources Group. Her research interests include corporate sustainability, environmental justice and policy making mechanisms. At ERG, she explores ways to improve ... Continue Reading »
- Carbon markets
- Circular Economy
- climate
- economics
- Environmental / Climate Equity
- Net Positive
- sustainable communities

Javiera Canales Valenzuela
MS
My principal interests are the development of sustainable urban systems that improve quality of life for people and work in harmony with the natural environment through the utilization of clean ... Continue Reading »

Jess Carney
MS, PhD
Integrating Fuel-Based End Uses Into a Clean Electric System: Quantifying the Trade Off Between Electrification and Electrically Synthesized Fuels (MS ’20) Jess Carney is interested in understanding how sustainable energy ... Continue Reading »

Jack Chang
MA, MPP
Hydrogen’s Potential Role is California’s Zero Emissions Future (MA ’20) I have been focusing on building decarbonization policy, renewable hydrogen and and island electrification as part of my master’s degrees ... Continue Reading »

Nabig Chaudhry
MS
I’m Nabig Chaudhry. I’m an MS candidate at UC Berkeley studying energy systems, climate change science, and environmental data science. My research and interests lie at the intersection of energy, ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- climate adaptation
- climate resilience
- energy
- Environmental / Climate Equity
- environmental data science
- Greentech/Climatetech
- sustainability

Jessica Craigg
PhD
My research focuses on the intersections between renewable energy, gender, and rural life in northern Tanzania. Informed by critical social theory and political economy and ecology of energy, my work ... Continue Reading »

Cristina Crespo Montanes
MS, PhD
Focusing on innovations in renewable energy infrastructure and the potential impacts of such technology in the energy markets, my main interest lies in mechanisms to enhance reliability of fully renewable ... Continue Reading »

Kate Cullen
PhD
Kate’s PhD research examines the role of climate change in exacerbating water stress and food insecurity in urbanized and highly irrigated basins in the Andes mountains. Her research builds upon ... Continue Reading »

John Dees
MS, PhD
John’s research is primarily concerned with macro-energy systems analysis. He is interested in the life cycle characteristics of renewable energy systems, with a current focus on the carbon drawdown potential ... Continue Reading »

Nicholas Depsky
MS, PhD
Drought in Central America: Past Patterns and Future Projections (MS ’19) Nick’s primary research focus is on the impacts of climate change on human migration and displacement. Specific focus areas ... Continue Reading »

Micah Elias
MS, PhD
Payment for Watershed Ecosystem Services: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Equity (MS ’20) Micah Elias earned his B.S. in International Agricultural Development from UC Davis in 2012. After graduating he worked with ... Continue Reading »

Salma Elmallah
MS, PhD
Characterizing Fairness, Transparency, and Openness in US Wind Project Planning (MS ’19) Salma’s background is in engineering, and she’s used her time at ERG to both extend her technical knowledge ... Continue Reading »

Isa Ferrall
MS, PhD
Decentralized solar energy systems for electricity access: historical context and comparisons of reliability (MS ’18) Isa is a MS/PhD Candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of ... Continue Reading »
- data sharing
- decentralized energy systems
- development
- energy
- RAEL
- rural electrification
- solar innovation
- sustainable development

Taryn Fransen
PhD
Taryn Fransen is a PhD student with the Energy and Resources Group and a Senior Fellow at the World Resources Institute. Her research interests center on the design and implementation ... Continue Reading »

Nancy Freitas
MS, PhD
Arctic Lake Emissions in a Warming World (MS ’20) At ERG, Nancy research focuses on identifying existing gaps in climate science and decision-making. In her master’s research, she used a ... Continue Reading »

Annelise Gill-Wiehl
MS, PhD
Annelise Gill-Wiehl is currently an NSF Graduate Student Researcher and an MS/Ph.D. Candidate in the Energy & Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, co-advised by Dr. Dan Kammen ... Continue Reading »

Will Gorman
MS, PhD
Effects of Electricity Consumption and Rate Design on Solar Plus Storage-enabled Grid Defection (MS ’19) Will’s primary research interests involve assessing the opportunity for distributed energy resources to participate on ... Continue Reading »
- Demand Side Management
- Distributed energy resources
- economics
- electricity storage
- energy policy
- renewable energy
- transportation

Anaya Hall
MS, PhD
Modeling Organic Waste Management for Soil Carbon Sequestration in California (MS ’19) Anaya is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. Prior to joining ... Continue Reading »

Adam Hanbury-Brown
MS, PhD
Adam is a PhD candidate focused on ecosystem modeling and remote sensing. His research aims to improve the representation of ecological processes, particularly forest regeneration, in Earth System Models (ESMs). ... Continue Reading »
- Agriculture
- climate
- Earth System Models
- ecology
- Forest Regeneration
- Movement Ecology
- remote sensing
- Vegetation Dynamics
- Wildlife Ecology

Anushah Hossain
MA, PhD
The Value of Connectivity: A Case Study of Cellular Networks in the Rural Philippines (MA ’18) Anushah’s background is in history and economics and she is interested in questions of ... Continue Reading »

Nia Jones
MS
A native of the nation’s Capitol, Washington, D.C., Nia was born into the city that handles the nation’s and World’s biggest problems. This influenced Nia to get involved at an ... Continue Reading »

Seigi Karasaki
MS, PhD
Seigi’s research focus is on the intersection of drinking water access, social justice, institutional capacity, and individual agency. He is primarily interested in weaving together historical and current race- and ... Continue Reading »
- Agriculture
- climate
- development
- Distributive justice
- economics
- energy
- environmental justice
- sanitation
- water

Jessica Katz
MS
Siting Renewable Energy in a Changing Climate: A Reimagining of BLM’s Solar Energy Zones (MS ’20) At ERG, Jessica is focusing on learning advanced methods to comprehensively evaluate the ecological, ... Continue Reading »

Sean Kelly
MS
While Sean is particularly interested in food systems, urban agriculture and food sovereignty, he is also intent on collaborating across disciplines in order to inform and support increasingly equitable and ... Continue Reading »

Jess Kersey
MS
Jess Kersey is a third-year PhD student with the University of California Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. She is broadly interested in decentralized and innovative energy technologies for energy access ... Continue Reading »

Cora Kingdon
MS, PhD
Cora Kingdon is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. Cora is interested in studying the distributional impacts of decision making under deep uncertainty ... Continue Reading »

José Daniel Lara
MS, PhD
Jose Daniel was born in San José Costa Rica, received his B.Sc. and Licentiate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Costa Rica in 2009 and 2012 respectively, his M.Sc. ... Continue Reading »
- development
- economics
- energy
- energy policy
- Energy System Modeling
- Optimization
- power systems operation
- power systems planning
- RAEL
- transportation
- water

Eli Lazarus
MS, PhD
Eli is an Ecological Economist working on comprehensive welfare measurement, tracking, and optimization. His research investigates and contributes to filling the gap between market optimization/welfare and broader social welfare. Recent ... Continue Reading »
- Anthoff Lab
- Computable General Equalibrium (CGE)
- ecological economics
- ecology
- economics
- energy
- Julia
- Pigouvian taxes
- Systems dynamics
- Systems Modelling

Jonathan Lee
MS, PhD
The Cost of Reliability in Decentralized Solar Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (MS ’18) Jonathan studies transitions in electric power systems and electricity markets, specifically microgrids and distributed energy resources, the ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- development
- energy
- RAEL
- renewable energy integration
- rural electrification
- solar energy
- sustainable energy development

Lynn Shiyayo Likhanga
MA
During her undergraduate career, Lynn spent time studying and learning more about the short and long-term evolution of the Earth’s climate and oceans with a focus on the East Frisian ... Continue Reading »

Julia Longmate
MS, PhD
Julia received her S.B. in Environmental Engineering from MIT, where she studied the fluid dynamics of disease transmission. Prior to coming to ERG, she worked for three years as a ... Continue Reading »
- Agriculture
- climate
- Environmental Economics
- fluid dynamics
- geospatial analysis
- remote sensing
- sustainable development
- water

Sophie Major
MA, PhD
Sophie Major is an interdisciplinary PhD candidate, studying and researching across the disciplines of political theory, environmental politics, and Indigenous studies. Their dissertation examines the marginalization of Indigenous people and ... Continue Reading »
- Contemporary Political Theory
- Decolonial Theory and Research Methods
- environmental justice
- History of Political Thought
- Indigenous Studies
- public policy

Arthur Mallet Dias
MS
Arthur is interested in using sustainable innovation as a framework for designing new businesses, services, and products that help tackle climate change. He is particularly interested in promoting sustainability through ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- development
- energy
- Entrepreneurship
- Environmental / Climate Equity
- Impact Investing
- local economic development
- sustainable communities
- Sustainable Innovation

Joyceline Marealle
MS
Joyceline is a Tanzanian who holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of Rochester. Her research interest lies in energy decentralization, diversification, economics and policy making to ... Continue Reading »

Samuel Miles
PhD
Sam Miles is a Ph.D. student in the Energy and Resources Group, and in the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focus is ... Continue Reading »
- Agriculture
- climate
- development
- economics
- energy
- Mini-grids
- Productive uses
- sanitation
- transportation
- Urbanization
- water

Priyanka Mohanty
MS
Priyanka is a second-year Masters of Science Student with the Energy and Resources Group. At ERG, she works on a variety of issues including the identification and quantification of the ... Continue Reading »
- China
- climate
- development
- economics
- environmental justice
- Green New Deal
- India
- Indonesia
- Low-Carbon Transport

Jill Moraski
PhD
Jill is interested in studying market outcomes, reliability concerns, and community planning objectives as they relate to electric grid decarbonization. Specifically, she’s interested in understanding how valuing community-level costs and ... Continue Reading »

Clayton Munnings
MS, PhD
Clayton’s research focuses on design evaluations and performance assessments of carbon offsets, carbon prices, and clean electricity standards with a geographic emphasis on the United States and China. He founded ... Continue Reading »

Hikari Murayama
MS
After earning her B.A. in Chemical Physics from Wellesley College, Hikari began her professional career doing economic consulting for Bates White in Washington D.C. While her interest in data and ... Continue Reading »

Molly Oshun
MS
Molly studies California watersheds. Her research investigates strategies to improve forest health, protect biodiversity, and nurture human relationship to the ecologies that sustain life under climate change. In particular, Molly ... Continue Reading »

Gauthami Penakalapati
MS, PhD
Evaluation of Social Networks and Measures of Empowerment Among Adolescent Girls in Uttar Pradesh, India (MS ’19) Gauthami’s interdisciplinary research intersects global health, feminist theory, science technology studies, social network ... Continue Reading »
- community-based and participatory methods
- development
- GIS
- qualitative methods
- sanitation
- social network analysis
- spatial analysis
- urban planning
- water
- Water Group
Phillippe Phanivong
MS
Managed Workplace Charging of Electric Vehicles as a Grid Asset (MS ’18) Phillippe is an MS student at ERG. His research interests are in the integration of distributed energy resources ... Continue Reading »

Sasha Ponomareva
MS
Sasha earned her B.A. in Environmental Analysis with a minor in Spanish from Pomona College in 2014. After this she worked for 5 years for the City of San Francisco, ... Continue Reading »

Jenny Rempel
MS, PhD
Surfacing Overlying Rights: Assessing Transitions in Overlying Rights to California’s Groundwater Basins (MS ’20) Jenny grew up in Fresno, California, and graduated from Stanford University with an interdisciplinary environmental science ... Continue Reading »

Lisa Rennels
MS, PhD
Sobol Sensitivity Analysis for Integrated Assessment Models: Supporting Result Characterization (MS ’19) Lisa is interested in using computer science to explore issues related to the economic impacts of climate change, ... Continue Reading »

Victor Reyes
MS
Hola! I’m Victor Reyes, a Mexican MS candidate. I have a BS/BA in Engineering with a concentration on Sustainability from the University of San Diego. My main interests are electric ... Continue Reading »

Esther Shears
MPP, MS, PhD
The Impact of Data Access on Academic Research: Evidence from the Land Remote-sensing Commercialization Act of 1984 (MS ’18) Esther researches how climate change will impact the financial sector and ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- economics
- environmental justice
- integrated assessment modeling
- international political economy
- SEEL Lab
- sustainable finance

Luke Sherman
MPP, MS
Luke’s research aims to encourage the use of innovative technology and management systems in order to improve environmental management and adapt to climate change. His work draws on economics, environmental ... Continue Reading »

Samira Siddique
MS, PhD
Development for the Stateless: the Displacement-Development Nexus and Implications for the Future (MS ’19) Samira Siddique is a PhD candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in the Energy ... Continue Reading »
- Climate change justice
- critical development studies
- Cultural memory
- Displacement infrastructure
- Forced migration and refugee studies
- Postcolonial theory

Aaryaman “Sunny” Singhal
MA, MPP
Aaryaman “Sunny” Singhal is a Masters student studying Environmental Science and Public Policy at UC-Berkeley. He is interested in water security as the climate changes – in terms of reliable ... Continue Reading »

Chelsi Sparti
MS
Chelsi is a Master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group. She researches resilience strategies and governance of power systems. Specifically, how government disaster recovery funds are handled in response ... Continue Reading »
- climate resilience
- decarbonization
- Disaster Recovery
- energy
- environmental justice
- governance
- policy
- Risk Mitigation

Jesse Strecker
MA, MPP
Evaluating the Role of Labor Unions in the Politics of Decarbonization: Insights from Political Economy and Socio-Technical Transition Studies (MA ’19) Jesse is a student in the concurrent Master’s degree ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- democracy
- development
- ecological economics
- ecology
- economics
- energy
- environmental justice
- governance
- Heterodox Economics

Julia Szinai
MPP, MS, PhD
Julia studied economics and Spanish at UC Berkeley as an undergraduate, and realized her interest in energy and environmental issues while a research assistant at the UC Energy Institute. After ... Continue Reading »
- climate change
- demand response
- electric system planning
- electric vehicles
- energy policy
- energy water nexus
- renewable integration

Catherine Van Dyke
MA
Catherine is a first year Master’s student at ERG studying agriculture and climate change. Her research focuses on water, resource allocation, and equity for farmers and ranchers in California. Prior ... Continue Reading »

Váleri Vásquez
MS, PhD
Váleri Vásquez is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group with a Designated Emphasis in Computational Data Science and Engineering. Váleri conducts most of her work in the ... Continue Reading »

Tzipora Wagner
MS
The Role of Stakeholder Networks in Urban Water System Innovation (MS ’20) Tzipora’s is interested in water resources and the role of technology in promoting sustainability, especially in the developing ... Continue Reading »

Liyang Wang
MS
Liyang is a Master’s student in the Energy & Resources Group and a Senior Research Associate in the Building Technology and Urban Systems Division at Berkeley Lab. She focuses on ... Continue Reading »

Rachel Ward
MS, PhD
Tropical Forests and the Allocation of Carbon to Reproduction (MS ’20) Rachel is interested in the social, ecological, and geophysical dynamics of agro-forestry coffee and cacao systems in the tropics. ... Continue Reading »

Cody Warner
MA
Lights Off in San Diego County: the Effect of Utility Deenergization Events on Household Electrification (MA ’20) Cody applies statistical and econometric models to the electricity sector and studies how ... Continue Reading »

Marshall Worsham
MS, PhD
A Remote Sensing Method for Detecting Agents of Forest Disturbance (MA ’20) Marshall’s interests lie in environmental governance and ecology, in particular, the relationships among regulatory structure, conflict, and ecosystem ... Continue Reading »

Hilary Yu
MS
Mining Data on Reclaimed Coal Mines: a Machine Learning Approach to Assessing Habitat Suitability (MS ’18) Hilary received her B.A. in Government and Biological Sciences, with a concentration in Ecology ... Continue Reading »
- climate
- development
- ecology
- economics
- energy
- environmental justice
- Science and Law
- sustainable development
- water