Students

Driven by a strong commitment to environmental stewardship, I bring a multidisciplinary background in environmental regulation, chemistry, soil carbon sequestration, and water quality.

Broadly, my research interests focus on designing electricity infrastructure systems that promote equitable socioeconomic outcomes.

Sol Alvarez-Taubin (she/ella) is a first year PhD student in the Energy & Resources Group at UC Berkeley.

Ari Ball-Burack is a first year PhD student in the Energy & Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Dr. Dan Kammen.

My research interests are broadly related to distributed energy resources — I hope to investigate pragmatic regulatory and policy methods to ensure that vulnerable populations are able to access these resources and their benefits.

Colette Brown is a PhD student at the Energy and Resources Group. Brown previously graduated from the ERG Master’s program; where she used Landsat 7 imagery and machine learning to analyze vegetation growth after the largest and most severe fire in Alaska.

Nica Campbell is an PhD candidate at the Energy and Resources Group. Her research interests include corporate sustainability, environmental justice and policy making mechanisms.

Nabig Chaudhry is an MS/PhD student at UC Berkeley specializing in climate adaptation. His research connects climate science and policy with product development and AI/ML, focusing on building practical tools that help us adapt to climate change.

Emilia is a PhD student at ERG. Her research focuses on grid planning to accelerate power system decarbonization by leveraging the existing system, such as reconductoring and surplus interconnection.

Alix is an award-winning documentary maker, both in film and audio, and has been working in nonfiction storytelling for over a decade, as a creator and as a teacher, focusing on stories of human rights, women’s voices, environmental justice and trauma-awareness.

As a pre-med and environmental history student in undergrad I have always been broadly fascinated by the intersection between human and environmental health.

Nathaniel (Nate) Dolton-Thornton is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. His research centers on the political economy of critical mineral supply chains for energy transitions, with a focus on China and Latin America.

MJ is an MS/JD student with the Energy & Resources Group and the Law school interested in climate displacement, migration, and sanctuary.

Tim Gröschel is a Master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). His work explores how renewable energies can be expanded in emerging economies to serve as the foundation of sustainable growth.

Ben has unique experience developing energy system models to support energy transformation decision making in his role as Co-Founder of Evolved Energy Research. His models have been utilized by parties in the governments of California, Washington, New York, and New Jersey to support emissions target...

Chris is a M.A./M.P.P. student with the Energy & Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy, focused on advancing effective and equitable climate and energy policy at the local level.

Ryan has spent the last decade developing modeling tools to explore technology pathways for deep decarbonization with special focus on electricity systems.

Jessica Katz is a PhD candidate focused on ecological stewardship under deep uncertainty. Her dissertation combines methods from ecology, statistics, and the decision sciences to understand how the diverse forests of the Western U.S. will respond to restoration and fuel reduction treatments under a...

Chris is a master’s student at the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. His work explores how renewable energy systems, data science, and local governance can be better integrated to support inclusive, climate-resilient development in underserved communities.

Cora Kingdon is a PhD candidate in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she draws from environmental economics, climate science, decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU), and political ecology to study the human health impacts from climate change and...

Cello focuses on the environmental impacts and social implications of the proposed Circular Economy with specific attention to application in the textile industry. Her current research seeks to measure and understand the underlying mechanisms of the “displacement rate” (i.e. if recycled products are...

Julia’s research focuses on the performance and usability of climate model outputs at decision-relevant scales. She received her S.B. in Environmental Engineering from MIT in 2016 where she studied the fluid dynamics of disease transmission, and she received her M.S. in Energy and Resources from UC...

Aneesha Manocha (she/her) is a PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley in the Energy Resources Group. She is particularly interested in developing optimization methods and macro-energy system models to plan decarbonized energy futures.

Jasmine’s research focuses on the infrastructures of and for imagination – the material, digital, and civic systems that shape how social and environmental futures are envisioned and made possible.

I'm interested in Water-Food-Energy systems, resources planning across different geographical scales, with a focus on water resources under climate uncertainty and political instability and leverage technology in data-scarce regions. I aim to drive socioeconomic development in vulnerable areas.

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.

I have a Bachelors in chemistry and a background in environmental and food quality research.

Dakota Pekerti (he/him) is a first-year Master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Dakota is passionate about working in sustainable development in Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia, designing policies and technologies to simultaneously accelerate an equitable transition...

Sophie Pesek is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. She is interested in using causal inference and remote sensing techniques to support vulnerable communities in adapting to climate change.

I'm generally interested in watershed management in the American west. I'm interested in incorporating interdisciplinary approaches to help address how to manage these critical resources in light of drought, climate change, and population increase.

Aaryaman “Sunny” Singhal earned a dual-degree in 2024 from the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC-Berkeley.

Simone Speizer is a PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley. Her research interests center on air pollution and climate impacts, and especially their intersections with health and equity.

I'm interested in exploring the impacts and unintended consequences of climate policies across levels of government, with the goal of better understanding how to make informed policy decisions and incorporating community-led governance.

Rachel is interested in the social, ecological, and geophysical dynamics of agro-forestry coffee and cacao systems in the tropics. Her aim is to couple participatory research of agro-forestry management choices with mathematical modeling and statistical analysis to understand how changes in...

Amulya is interested in studying utility governance, with the aim of making our energy system more responsive to the needs of historically underserved communities.

I'm interested in the application of remote sensing to improve vegetation management, validate nature-based climate solutions, and managing and building out electrical infrastructure.

Hilary received her B.A. in Government and Biological Sciences, with a concentration in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the latter, from Cornell University, where she graduated in 2015.

Anna is interested in how renewable resource infrastructure is implemented across the world and reinforced against natural disasters. She would like to apply this knowledge to different infrastructure challenges as new renewable resources are being improved and implemented at scale.

I’m interested in using cutting-edge data to assess how environmental factors causally affect social and economic outcomes, teasing out important impact channels and mechanisms to assess how communities and individuals can adapt or respond.

Alina Leticia Zárate is a second year PhD student in the Energy and Resources Group. Zárate’s research interests center around farmworker justice and farmworker vulnerability to climate changes in addition to environment-labor dynamics, the water-food-energy nexus, and transition to sustainable...