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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Sally M. Benson* was promoted to director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP)
in January 2009 after holding the executive director post since March 2007. A professor of research in energy resources engineering, Sally has been a member of Stanford’s faculty since 2007.
A ground water hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Sally has researched a range of issues related to energy and the environment. For the past 10 years, she has studied how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and pumping it into deep underground formations for permanent sequestration. Sally was a coordinating lead author on the influential 2005 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage.” Her research interests also include technologies and
energy systems for a low-carbon future, groundwater quality and remediation, biogeochemistry of selenium, and geotechnical instrumentation for subsurface characterization and monitoring.
Prior to joining GCEP, Sally worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory serving in a number of capacities, including director of the division of earth sciences, associate laboratory director for energy sciences and deputy director for operations.
Sally graduated from Barnard College at Columbia University in 1977 with a bachelor’s degree in geology. She completed her graduate education in 1988 at the University of California (UC) Berkeley after receiving master’s and doctoral degrees, both in materials science and mineral engineering.
The author or co-author of more than 160 scientific publications, Sally is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists.
Stacey F. Bent* is a professor of chemical engineering and director of the TomKat Center for
Sustainable Energy. She also co-directs the Stanford’s Center on Nanostructuring for Efficient Energy Conversion (CNEEC), which is an Energy Frontier Research Center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). She holds courtesy appointments in materials science and engineering, electrical engineering, and chemistry.
For 15 years she has led an active research group in semiconductor processing, surface science and materials chemistry. She supervises approximately 15 students and postdoctoral researchers working toward applications in renewable energy devices and next-generation microelectronics.
Stacey has made long-standing contributions to the field of surface science. Her current
research efforts include studies of deposition of inorganic thin-film solar cells made from earth-abundant, non-toxic elements, interface engineering for improved efficiency in single-junction solar cells, and atomic layer deposition of electrocatalysts for fuel cells and solar fuels.
Stacey received her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from UC-Berkeley in 1987. She attended graduate school as a National Science Foundation predoctoral fellow at Stanford, earning her doctorate in chemistry in 1992. She then joined AT&T Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill, New Jersey as a postdoctoral fellow. Stacey joined the faculty of New York University as an assistant professor of chemistry before moving to Stanford in 1998.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Yi Cui joined the faculty as assistant professor of materials science and engineering in 2005
and was promoted to associate professor last year. Yi is also a David Filo and Jerry Yang faculty scholar. His current research is focused on nanomaterials for energy storage, photovoltaics, topological insulators, biology and environment.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the University of Science and Technology of China in 1998. Yi attended graduate school from 1998 to 2002 at Harvard University, where he worked under the supervision of Prof. Charles Lieber. His doctoral thesis was on semiconductor nanowires for nanotechnology including synthesis, nanoelectroncis, and nanosensor
applications. After that, Yi worked as a Miller postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at UC-Berkeley, mainly researching electronics and assembly using colloidal nanocrystals. Yi has earned numerous awards, including the Sloan Research Fellowship (2010), the KAUST Investigator Award (2008), and the Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004).
Thomas P. Devereaux* is professor of applied physics and the acting director of the Stanford
Institute for Materials & Energy Sciences.
Thomas’ main research interests are in the areas of theoretical condensed matter physics and computational physics. His research effort focuses on using the tools of computational physics to understand quantum materials.
Thomas received his doctorate in physics from the University of Oregon in 1991, master’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1988, and bachelor’s degree from New York University in 1986.
His awards include the research fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation
(2002-2006), Premier's Research Excellence Award, Province of Ontario (2003), Scientist Research Fellowship, Embassy of France (2005), and Fellow of the American Physics Society (2008).
Steve Eglash is executive director of Stanford’s Energy and Environment Affiliates Program,
where he is responsible for developing and managing interactions for corporations and other organizations having an interest in Stanford’s research, faculty and graduate students in energy-related and environmental fields.
Steve brings to this position a background in renewable energy, business, technology and finance. Previously, Steve was president and chief executive of Cyrium Technologies, a solar energy startup company, and a consultant and advisor to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the DOE.
Before that Steve was a venture capitalist at Worldview Technology Partners where he emphasized investments in semiconductors, displays, lighting and energy. He was also vice
president at SDL Inc., where he managed businesses in telecommunications, printing, optical amplifiers and industrial lasers.
Steve began his career as a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees at Stanford after his bachelor’s degree from UC-Berkeley, all in electrical engineering. He has more than 40 papers published in peer-reviewed journals and four patents.
Steve is a fellow of the SPIE, as well as a member of IEEE and the Optical Society of America. He is also a member of the City of Palo Alto Utilities Advisory Commission.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Lawrence H. Goulder* is the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource
Economics, former chair of the Economics Department, and the Kennedy-Grossman Fellow in Human Biology. Larry is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a university fellow of Resources for the Future, which is a non-profit environmental and natural resource research firm in Washington, DC.
Larry’s research examines the environmental and economic impacts of U.S. and international environmental policies, including policies to deal with climate change and pollution from power plants and automobiles. His work also explores the sustainability of consumption patterns in various countries. Larry’s work often employs a general equilibrium analytical framework that integrates the economy and the environment, and links the activities of government, industry and households. The research considers both the aggregate benefits and costs of various
policies as well as the distribution of policy impacts across industries, income groups and generations. Some of his work involves collaborations with climatologists and biologists.
Larry has conducted analyses for several government agencies, environmental organizations and industry groups. At Stanford, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in environmental economics and policy, and co-organizes a weekly seminar in applied microeconomics.
Larry graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1973. He obtained a master's degree in musical composition from the Ecole Normale de Musique de Paris in 1975 and earned a doctorate in economics from Stanford in 1982. He was a faculty member in economics at Harvard before returning to Stanford's Economics Department in 1989.
Leigh L. Johnson is the programs and outreach manager for PIE. Leigh was the first employee
of the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford, where she served for seven years in a variety of capacities. Leading up to the formation of the institute, Leigh served as lead staff for the Stanford Provost Committee for the Environment. When the Woods Institute was formed, she helped create the early administrative structure, facilitated the development of the initial five-year business plan, and oversaw the branding, communications and web development. She served as lead staff on a variety of faculty committees and signature programs including the International Sustainability Days conference, the initial First Nations Futures Program, the Society for Environmental Journalists conference, the Heat is On, Uncommon Dialogues, the Environmental Forum, Mel Lane Student Program Grants, Mentoring Undergraduates in Interdisciplinary Research Program, and the selection process for Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowships.
Leigh became involved in the Stanford energy community five years ago by staffing the Woods energy faculty
committee, and launching and managing the five-year-old Energy Seminar. She has served for two years as lead staff for the GCEP Annual Research Symposium, and this past year she co-developed the Energy@Stanford & SLAC program.
Prior to joining Stanford, Leigh worked in sales for IBM and in communications at Regis McKenna. She has served as board president for the Las Lomitas Education Foundation and the Ragazzi Boys Chorus. She earned a bachelor’s degree in math from Dartmouth College.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Michael D. McGehee is a professor of materials science and engineering, the director of the
Center for Advanced Molecular Photovoltaics and a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.
Michael’s research interests are patterning materials at the nanometer length scale,
semiconducting polymers and solar cells. He has taught courses on nanotechnology, organic semiconductors, polymer science and solar cells. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and his doctorate in materials science from UC-Santa Barbara, where he did research on polymer lasers in the lab of Nobel laureate Alan Heeger. He has won the 2007 Materials Research Society Outstanding Young Investigator Award and the Mohr Davidow Innovators Award.
Michael is also a technical advisor to the companies Nanosolar and Plextronics. His students have founded three solar cell companies.
Jens K. Nørskov is the Leland T. Edwards Professor in the School of Engineering and the
director of the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis.
Jens’ research applies a new technique at the atomic scale that will allow researchers to systematically search for the right catalysts for specific chemical reactions, instead of the
traditional, time-consuming method of trial and error. His research aims at developing theoretical methods and concepts to understand surface chemical properties, heterogeneous catalysis, electro-catalysis and the link to enzyme function.
Jens received his doctorate in theoretical physics and his master’s degree in physics and chemistry, both at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Jens is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Science and Letters, and of the Danish Academy of Engineering.
Before coming to Stanford and SLAC, Jens was a professor of physics and director of the Center for Atomic-Scale Materials Design at the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby. He also chaired the Danish Center for Scientific Computing.
Honors include the Gabor A. Somorjai Award for Creative Research in Catalysis (2009) and the Giuseppe Parravano Memorial Award for Excellence in Catalysis Research, Michigan Catalysis Society, (2011).
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Franklin M. "Lynn" Orr, Jr.* became the director of the PIE upon its establishment in 2009. He
served as director of the GCEP from 2002 to 2008. Lynn was the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences from 1994 to 2002.
Lynn earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Stanford in 1969 and his doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1976. He has been a member of the Stanford faculty since 1985 and is the Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor of Petroleum Engineering in energy resources engineering, and is a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.
Lynn's research interests include multiphase flow in porous media; interactions of high-pressure phase equilibria of multicomponent mixtures with multiphase flow, with applications to
enhanced oil recovery by gas injection processes and contaminant transport in aquifers; modeling of large-scale, hydrodynamically unstable flows in naturally heterogeneous porous media; theory of first-order partial differential equations as applied to chromatographic separations that occur during multiphase flow in porous media; capillary
phenomena of near-critical fluids in porous systems; and gas hydrates and CO2 sequestration.
Lynn is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He serves as vice chair of the board of directors of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, and he chairs the Science Advisory Committee for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and was a foundation board member from 1999 to 2008.
Friedrich B. “Fritz” Prinz is the Finmeccanica Professor and Robert Bosch Chair of the
Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also co-director of the CNEEC, and a senior fellow of PIE.
Fritz’s current work focuses on scaling effects and quantum confinement phenomena for energy conversion. His graduate students study mass transports phenomena across thin membranes such as oxide films and lipid by-layers. The Prinz research group employs scanning probe microscopy, impedance spectroscopy and quantum modeling. In his laboratory, prototype fuel cells, solar cells and batteries serve to test new concepts and novel material structures. Fritz, a solid state physicist by training, leads a group of 20 doctoral students with a variety of science and engineering backgrounds. His students address fundamental issues towards
energy conversion at the nanoscale. Prinz Group studies proton and oxide ion transport in thin oxide films made by atomic layer deposition. In addition, his group addresses bandgap changes in quantum-confined structures using scanning tunneling microscopy. The combination of atomic layer deposition with atomic force microscopy enables the Prinz Group to deposit novel quantum dot structures with defined shape and from a variety of materials. In collaboration with biologist Arthur Grossman, for the first time the group extracted electrons directly from plant cells subject to light stimulus. At CNEEC, Fritz participate in two of the thematic research groups, those on thermodynamic potentials and on catalysis. This provides synergism for several center projects including biomimetic catalyst design and fabrication of quantum confinement structures.
Fritz obtained his doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna. He serves on the faculties of materials science and engineering, and mechanical engineering. Before arriving at Stanford in 1994, he served on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, where he directed a National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center on engineering design.
Honors include the 1991-92 Engineer of the Year, American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania section. Fritz is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Daniel Reicher* serves as executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Finance
and Policy, housed at both the Law School and Graduate School of Business. He has more than 25 years of experience in energy and environmental technology, policy, finance and law, including serving in the Clinton administration at the DOE as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. Dan recently was a member of President Obama’s transition team, where he focused on the energy portions of the stimulus package and was an adviser to the Obama campaign on energy and climate issues. He comes to Stanford from Google, where he served since 2007 as director of climate change and energy initiatives.
Dan is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Board on Energy and Environmental Systems, co-chairman of the board of the American Council on Renewable Energy, and a member of the boards of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the Apollo
Alliance and the UC-Davis Energy Efficiency Center. Before his position at Google, Dan served as president and co-founder of New Energy Capital, a private equity firm funded by the California State Teachers Retirement System and Vantage Point Venture Partners to invest in clean energy projects. He also served as executive vice president of
Northern Power Systems, one of the nation’s oldest renewable energy companies. Dan was also an adjunct professor at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and at Vermont Law School.
Dan has held several positions with the DOE, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the World Resources Institute and the Natural Resources Defense Council. He also worked for the Massachusetts attorney general, and served as a law clerk to a federal district court judge in Boston and as a legal assistant in the Hazardous Waste Section of the U.S. Department of Justice. Dan was on the staff of President Carter's Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Dartmouth College and a juris doctorate from Stanford Law School. He also studied at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and MIT.
Professor James L. Sweeney* directs the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center and is a
professor of management science and engineering. His professional activities focus on economic policy and analysis, particularly in energy, natural resources and the environment. Jim is a senior fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, the Hoover Institution, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, the Woods Institute for the Environment and PIE. He also is a senior fellow of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics, a lifetime National Associate of the National Academies, a council member and senior fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology, and a member of the external advisory council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
At Stanford, Jim has served as director of the Energy Modeling Forum, chairman of the Institute
for Energy Studies and director of the Center for Economic Policy Research. He was a founding member of the International Association for Energy Economics, co-editor of Resource and Energy Economics, and vice-president for publications of the International Association for Energy Economics. In the early 1970's, Jim was director of the Office of Energy Systems Modeling and Forecasting of the U.S. Federal Energy Administration. He has served as a member of numerous committees of the National Research Council including the following: America’s Energy Future, Benefits of the DOE R&D in Energy Efficiency and Fossil Energy, Effectiveness and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards, and Alternatives and Strategies for Future Hydrogen Production and Use.
Jim holds a bachelor’s degree from MIT in electrical engineering and a doctorate from Stanford in engineering-economic systems.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
John P. Weyant is a professor (research) of management science and engineering, the director
of the Energy Modeling Forum and the deputy director of the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center. John came to Stanford in 1977, primarily to help develop the Energy Modeling Forum. He was a senior research associate in operations research, a member of the Stanford International Energy Project and a fellow in the U.S.-Northeast Asia Forum on International Policy. He is an adviser to the DOE, Pacific Gas & Electric, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. John’s current research is focused on global climate change, energy security, corporate strategy analysis, Japanese energy policy, analysis of global climate change policy options, energy- efficiency analysis, energy-technology assessment and models for strategic planning. He has been a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for chapters on
integrated assessment, greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated climate impacts and sustainable development. Most recently John served as a review editor for the climate change mitigation working group of the IPCC’s fourth assessment report. He has been active in the U.S. debate on climate change policy through the Department of State, the DOE and the Environmental Protection Agency.
John serves on the editorial boards of The Energy Journal and of Petroleum Management. His national society
memberships include the American Economics Association, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, the Econometric Society, the International Association of Energy Economists, and the Mathematical Programming Society. He is a member of the California Air Resources Board’s Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee, which is charged with making recommendations for technology policies to help implement Assembly Bill 32, the state Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. John was awarded the U.S. Association for Energy Economics’ 2008 Adelmann-Frankel award for unique and innovative contributions to the field of energy economics. He was honored in 2007 as a major contributor to the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the IPCC and in 2008 for contributions to the Air Resources Board on Assembly Bill 32.
Frank A. Wolak* is the Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the
Department of Economics and the director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development in the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Frank’s fields of specialization are industrial organization and econometric theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries, such as telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services, and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He chairs the market surveillance committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at the UC Energy Institute and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Frank received both his master’s and doctoral degrees from Harvard University, and his bachelor’s degree from Rice University.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Mark D. Zoback is the Benjamin M. Page Professor in Earth Sciences and the co-director of the
Stanford Rock Physics and Borehole Geophysics Project, an industrial affiliate program. Mark conducts research on in situ stress, fault mechanics and reservoir geomechanics. He was one of the principal investigators of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth project, in which a scientific research well was successfully drilled through the fault at seismogenic depth.
Mark was also the principal investigator on two GCEP efforts, “Geologic Storage of CO2 in Coal
Beds” and “Seal Capacity of Potential CO2 Sequestration Sites.”
Mark is the author of the textbook Reservoir Geomechanics published in 2007 by Cambridge University Press. He is the author or co-author of 300 technical papers and holds five patents. His honors include the Emil Wiechert Medal of the German Geophysical Society (2006) and the Walter H. Bucher Medal from the American Geophysical Union (2008).
In 2011, Mark was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. In 1996, he co-founded GeoMechanics
International, where he was chairman of the board until 2008. He currently serves as a senior executive adviser to Baker Hughes. Mark also works on the National Academy of Energy committee investigating the Deepwater Horizon accident and the secretary of energy’s committee on shale gas development and environmental protection.
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*PIE Executive Committee Member
Student Speakers:
Brentan R. Alexander is a graduate student of mechanical engineering, as well as founder and
co-president of the Stanford Energy Club. Brentan is a U.S. Department of Defense NDSEG fellow and doctoral candidate of mechanical engineering.
Brentan researches advanced electrochemical technologies that allow for the clean and efficient conversion of numerous biomass feedstocks to electrical energy or hydrogen gas. He has a great interest in numerous energy technologies, including solar, battery and gasification, and their applications within the market. As an entrepreneurial technologist with a strong background in clean technology, Brentan can critically analyze emerging technologies as well as understand the political and business forces that shape the technologies as they come to market.
Brentan holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, where he won numerous departmental honors and was awarded the Warren M. Rohsenow Graduate Fellowship. His areas of focus at MIT included the design, modeling and analysis of fluid mechanic and thermodynamic systems for both
microelectromechanical systems and microfluidic devices, as well as for large-scale energy production applications.
Natalie C. Johnson is a graduate student of chemical engineering. Her GCEP-funded research
focuses on geochemical interactions associated with subsurface carbon storage and she is advised by professors of geology and environmental science. The objective of her work is to understand the kinetics and mechanisms of mineral carbonation, a reaction between silicate
rocks and CO2 in the presence of water to form carbonate rocks. The result of successful
mineral carbonation is the long-term sequestration of CO2 that would have otherwise been
released to the atmosphere and contributed to climate change.
Natalie earned her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Brown University in 2008 and earned her master’s degree from Stanford in 2010 in the same field.
Jared W. Schwede is a graduate student in physics and GCEP distinguished student lecturer. He began his work at Z-X
Shen’s lab in 2008. Jared is interested in photoexcitation with an eye towards energy applications. His hope is to apply this enormous expertise to gain unique insight into novel solar energy designs.
