Precourt Institute for Energy
Showing 41-60 of 109 Results
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Sarah Heilshorn
Director, Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM), Rickey/Nielsen Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor, by courtesy, of Bioengineering and of Chemical Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsProtein engineering
Tissue engineering
Regenerative medicine
Biomaterials -
Thomas Heller
Lewis Talbot and Nadine Hearn Shelton Professor of International Legal Studies, Emeritus
BioAn expert in international law and legal institutions, Thomas C. Heller has focused his research on the rule of law, international climate control, global energy use, and the interaction of government and nongovernmental organizations in establishing legal structures in the developing world. He has created innovative courses on the role of law in transitional and developing economies, as well as the comparative study of law in developed economies. He has co-directed the law school’s Rule of Law Program, as well as the Stanford Program in International and Comparative Law. Professor Heller has been a visiting professor at the European University Institute, Catholic University of Louvain, and Hong Kong University, and has served as the deputy director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, where he is now a senior fellow.
Professor Heller is also a senior fellow (by courtesy) at the Woods Institute for the Environment. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1979, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and an attorney-advisor to the governments of Chile and Colombia. -
Roland Horne
Thomas Davies Barrow Professor and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWell Testing, Optimisation and Geothermal Reservoir Engineering
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Mark Horowitz
Fortinet Founders Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering, Yahoo! Founders Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Computer Science
BioProfessor Horowitz initially focused on designing high-performance digital systems by combining work in computer-aided design tools, circuit design, and system architecture. During this time, he built a number of early RISC microprocessors, and contributed to the design of early distributed shared memory multiprocessors. In 1990, Dr. Horowitz took leave from Stanford to help start Rambus Inc., a company designing high-bandwidth memory interface technology. After returning in 1991, his research group pioneered many innovations in high-speed link design, and many of today’s high speed link designs are designed by his former students or colleagues from Rambus.
In the 2000s he started a long collaboration with Prof. Levoy on computational photography, which included work that led to the Lytro camera, whose photographs could be refocused after they were captured.. Dr. Horowitz's current research interests are quite broad and span using EE and CS analysis methods to problems in neuro and molecular biology to creating new agile design methodologies for analog and digital VLSI circuits. He remains interested in learning new things, and building interdisciplinary teams. -
Robert Huggins
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Emeritus
BioProfessor Huggins joined Stanford as Assistant Professor in 1954, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1958, and to Professor in 1962.
His research activities have included studies of imperfections in crystals, solid-state reaction kinetics, ferromagnetism, mechanical behavior of solids, crystal growth, and a wide variety of topics in physical metallurgy, ceramics, solid state chemistry and electrochemistry. Primary attention has recently been focused on the development of understanding of solid state ionic phenomena involving solid electrolytes and mixed ionic-electronic conducting materials containing atomic or ionic species such as lithium, sodium or oxygen with unusually high mobility, as well as their use in novel battery and fuel cell systems, electrochromic optical devices, sensors, and in enhanced heterogeneous catalysis. He was also involved in the development of the understanding of the key role played by the phase composition and oxygen stoichiometry in determining the properties of high temperature oxide superconductors.
Topics of particular recent interest have been related to energy conversion and storage, including hydrogen transport and hydride formation in metals, alloys and intermetallic compounds, and various aspects of materials and phenomena related to advanced lithium batteries.
He has over 400 professional publications, including three books; "Advanced Batteries", published by Springer in 2009, "Energy Storage", published by Springer in 2010, and Energy Storage, Second Edition in 2016. -
Hillard Huntington
Executive Director, Energy Modeling Forum
Researcher, Management Science and Engineering - Energy Modeling Forum
Staff, Management Science and Engineering - Energy Modeling ForumBioHuntington is Executive Director of Stanford University's Energy Modeling Forum, where he conducts studies to improve the usefulness of models for understanding energy and environmental problems. In 2005 the Forum received the prestigious Adelman-Frankel Award from the International Association for Energy Economics for its "unique and innovative contribution to the field of energy economics."
His current research interests are modeling energy security, energy price shocks, energy market impacts of environmental policies, and international natural gas and LNG markets. In 2002 he won the Best Paper Award from the Energy Journal for a paper co-authored with Professor Dermot Gately of New York University.
He is a Senior Fellow and a past-President of the United States Association for Energy Economics and a member of the National Petroleum Council. He was also Vice-President for Publications for the International Association for Energy Economics and a member of the American Statistical Association's Committee on Energy Data. Previously, he served on a joint USA-Russian National Academy of Sciences Panel on energy conservation research and development.
Huntington has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the California Energy Commission.
Prior to coming to Stanford in 1980, he held positions in the corporate and government sectors with Data Resources Inc., the U.S. Federal Energy Administration, and the Public Utilities Authority in Monrovia, Liberia (as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer). -
Gianluca Iaccarino
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsComputing and data for energy, health and engineering
Challenges in energy sciences, green technology, transportation, and in general, engineering design and prototyping are routinely tackled using numerical simulations and physical testing. Computations barely feasible two decades ago on the largest available supercomputers, have now become routine using turnkey commercial software running on a laptop. Demands on the analysis of new engineering systems are becoming more complex and multidisciplinary in nature, but exascale-ready computers are on the horizon. What will be the next frontier? Can we channel this enormous power into an increased ability to simulate and, ultimately, to predict, design and control? In my opinion two roadblocks loom ahead: the development of credible models for increasingly complex multi-disciplinary engineering applications and the design of algorithms and computational strategies to cope with real-world uncertainty.
My research objective is to pursue concerted innovations in physical modeling, numerical analysis, data fusion, probabilistic methods, optimization and scientific computing to fundamentally change our present approach to engineering simulations relevant to broad areas of fluid mechanics, transport phenomena and energy systems. The key realization is that computational engineering has largely ignored natural variability, lack of knowledge and randomness, targeting an idealized deterministic world. Embracing stochastic scientific computing and data/algorithms fusion will enable us to minimize the impact of uncertainties by designing control and optimization strategies that are robust and adaptive. This goal can only be accomplished by developing innovative computational algorithms and new, physics-based models that explicitly represent the effect of limited knowledge on the quantity of interest.
Multidisciplinary Teaching
I consider the classical boundaries between disciplines outdated and counterproductive in seeking innovative solutions to real-world problems. The design of wind turbines, biomedical devices, jet engines, electronic units, and almost every other engineering system requires the analysis of their flow, thermal, and structural characteristics to ensure optimal performance and safety. The continuing growth of computer power and the emergence of general-purpose engineering software has fostered the use of computational analysis as a complement to experimental testing in multiphysics settings. Virtual prototyping is a staple of modern engineering practice! I have designed a new undergraduate course as an introduction to Computational Engineering, covering theory and practice across multidisciplanary applications. The emphasis is on geometry modeling, mesh generation, solution strategy and post-processing for diverse applications. Using classical flow/thermal/structural problems, the course develops the essential concepts of Verification and Validation for engineering simulations, providing the basis for assessing the accuracy of the results. -
Rob Jackson
Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioRob Jackson and his lab examine the many ways people affect the Earth. They produce basic scientific knowledge and use it to help shape policies and reduce the environmental footprint of global warming, energy extraction, and other environmental issues. They're currently examining the effects of climate change and drought on old-growth forests. They are also working to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions through the Global Carbon Project (globalcarbonproject.org), which Jackson chairs. Examples of new research Rob leads include establishing a global network of methane tower measurements across the Amazon and more than 100 sites worldwide and measuring and reducing methane emissions and air pollution from oil and gas wells, city streets, and homes and buildings.
Rob's new book on climate solutions, Into the Clear Blue Sky (Scribner and Penguin Random House), was named a "Top Science Book of 2024" by The Times. As an author and photographer, Rob has published a previous trade book about the environment (The Earth Remains Forever, University of Texas Press), two books of children’s poems, Animal Mischief and Weekend Mischief (Highlights Magazine and Boyds Mills Press), and recent or forthcoming poems in the journals Southwest Review, Cortland Review, Cold Mountain Review, Atlanta Review, LitHub, and more. His photographs have appeared in many media outlets, including the NY Times, Washington Post, USA Today, US News and World Report, Science, Nature, and National Geographic News.
Rob is a recent Djerassi artist in residence, Guggenheim Fellow, and sabbatical visitor in the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He is also a Fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Geophysical Union, and Ecological Society of America. He received a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering from the National Science Foundation, awarded at the White House. -
Mark Z. Jacobson
Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioMark Z. Jacobson’s career has focused on better understanding air pollution and global warming problems and developing large-scale clean, renewable energy solutions to them. Toward that end, he has developed and applied three-dimensional atmosphere-biosphere-ocean computer models and solvers to simulate air pollution, weather, climate, and renewable energy. He has also developed roadmaps to transition states and countries to 100% clean, renewable energy for all purposes and computer models to examine grid stability in the presence of high penetrations of renewable energy.
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Thomas Jaramillo
Professor of Chemical Engineering, of Energy Science Engineering, of Photon Science and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
On Leave from 10/01/2024 To 06/30/2025BioRecent years have seen unprecedented motivation for the emergence of new energy technologies. Global dependence on fossil fuels, however, will persist until alternate technologies can compete economically. We must develop means to produce energy (or energy carriers) from renewable sources and then convert them to work as efficiently and cleanly as possible. Catalysis is energy conversion, and the Jaramillo laboratory focuses on fundamental catalytic processes occurring on solid-state surfaces in both the production and consumption of energy. Chemical-to-electrical and electrical-to-chemical energy conversion are at the core of the research. Nanoparticles, metals, alloys, sulfides, nitrides, carbides, phosphides, oxides, and biomimetic organo-metallic complexes comprise the toolkit of materials that can help change the energy landscape. Tailoring catalyst surfaces to fit the chemistry is our primary challenge.
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Ramesh Johari
Professor of Management Science and Engineering and, by courtesy, of Electrical Engineering
On Partial Leave from 01/01/2025 To 06/30/2025BioJohari is broadly interested in the design, economic analysis, and operation of online platforms, as well as statistical and machine learning techniques used by these platforms (such as search, recommendation, matching, and pricing algorithms).
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Leigh Johnson
Academic Research & Program Officer, Precourt Institute for Energy
BioLeigh works closely with the faculty co-directors and staff to implement the institute’s vision and strategic direction. She manages a team who supports the energy research, education and outreach mission of the institute and Stanford broadly. The institute serves as the hub for over 200 faculty across the university who conduct energy research, students from Stanford’s seven schools, and staff from energy programs and centers across Stanford. Outreach activities engage stakeholders from industry, government and non-governmental organizations, academia and the Stanford alumni community in an energy ecosystem. Activities that serve this broad constituency include several annual conferences, topical workshops, student programs and the weekly Stanford Energy Seminar. The team covers energy news and information across the university through articles in Stanford Report, the institute's website, the monthly Stanford Energy News and social media.
Leigh started at Stanford in 2003 as project development director for the Provost Committee for the Environment, and as the first employee she served as associate director of programs at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment where she worked for seven years on a wide-range of entrepreneurial and programmatic activities. Prior to joining Stanford, Leigh worked in public relations at Regis McKenna Inc. and sales at IBM. Non-profit commitments have included: president of the Las Lomitas Education Foundation, president of the Ragazzi Boys Chorus Board of Directors, and docent for Y2E2 building tours. Leigh holds an A.B. degree in mathematics from Dartmouth College. -
Matthew Kanan
Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioMatt Kanan is a Professor of Chemistry and Director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy at Stanford. Matt’s research group addresses challenges in energy conversion, sustainable resource utilization, and carbon dioxide removal. Their work has led to several inventions in these areas, including process technology that utilizes CO2 to streamline chemical production, metal-free CO2 hydrogenation catalysts that improve the efficiency of sustainable fuel synthesis, membrane-free electrochemical systems to generate acid and base from water, and thermochemical methods to activate silicate rocks for CO2 removal. Matt is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Advisor for ReSource Chemical Corp., an Oakland-based start-up commercializing a process created in his group to produce performance-advantaged plastics from CO2 and inedible biomass. At the TomKat Center, Matt directs programs that help Stanford students and researchers develop and commercialize innovations that impact energy and sustainability. Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2009, Matt did his Ph.D. studies in organic chemistry at Harvard and postdoctoral research at MIT in inorganic chemistry. He earned his B.A. in chemistry from Rice University in 2000.
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Chi-Chang Kao
Professor of Photon Science and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioChi-Chang Kao works on the development of experimental methods exploiting the unique properties of high-brightness storage rings and X-ray Free Electron Lasers (XFEL), and their applications to materials science. Currently, he is working on using X-ray scattering in combination with high magnetic fields to study high-temperature superconductors, inelastic X-ray scattering study of materials using XFEL, and X-ray study of materials for energy applications.
Kao served as the fifth director of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory from November 2012 to February 2023. Prior to that, he served at Brookhaven National Laboratory for nearly 25 years in a variety of positions, including five years as chairperson of the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS). He was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2006 and was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010 for his many contributions to resonant elastic and inelastic X-ray scattering techniques and their application to materials physics, as well as for his leadership at the NSLS. -
Omer Karaduman
Assistant Professor of Operations, Information and Technology at the Graduate School of Business and Center Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioPrior to coming to Stanford, Omer completed his Ph.D. in Economics at MIT in 2020, and got his bachelor's degree in Economics from Bilkent University in 2014.
His research focuses on the transition of the energy sector towards a decarbonized and sustainable future. In his research, he utilizes large datasets by using game-theoretical modeling to have practical policy suggestions. -
Hemamala Karunadasa
J.G. Jackson and C.J. Wood Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and Professor, by courtesy, of Materials Science and Engineering
BioProfessor Hema Karunadasa works with colleagues in materials science, earth science, and applied physics to drive the discovery of new materials with applications in clean energy. Using the tools of synthetic chemistry, her group designs materials that couple the structural tunability of organic molecules with the diverse electronic and optical properties of extended inorganic solids. This research targets materials such as sorbents for capturing environmental pollutants, phosphors for solid-state lighting, and absorbers for solar cells.
Hemamala Karunadasa studied chemistry and materials science at Princeton University (A.B. with high honors 2003; Certificate in Materials Science and Engineering 2003), where her undergraduate thesis project with Professor Robert J. Cava examined geometric magnetic frustration in metal oxides. She moved from solid-state chemistry to solution-state chemistry for her doctoral studies in inorganic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph.D. 2009) with Professor Jeffrey R. Long. Her thesis focused on heavy atom building units for magnetic molecules and molecular catalysts for generating hydrogen from water. She continued to study molecular electrocatalysts for water splitting during postdoctoral research with Berkeley Professors Christopher J. Chang and Jeffrey R. Long at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. She further explored molecular catalysts for hydrocarbon oxidation as a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology with Professor Harry B. Gray. She joined the Stanford Chemistry Department faculty in September 2012. Her research explores solution-state routes to new solid-state materials.
Professor Karunadasa’s lab at Stanford takes a molecular approach to extended solids. Lab members gain expertise in solution- and solid-state synthetic techniques and structure determination through powder- and single-crystal x-ray diffraction. Lab tools also include a host of spectroscopic and electrochemical probes, imaging methods, and film deposition techniques. Group members further characterize their materials under extreme environments and in operating devices to tune new materials for diverse applications in renewable energy.
Please visit the lab website for more details and recent news. -
Leonid Kazovsky
Professor (Research) of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus
BioProfessor Kazovsky and his research group are investigating green energy-efficient networks. The focus of their research is on access and in-building networks and on hybrid optical / wireless networks. Prof. Kazovsky's research group is also conducting research on next-generation Internet architectures and novel zero-energy photonic components.
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Jeffrey R. Koseff
William Alden Campbell and Martha Campbell Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Oceans, Emeritus
BioJeff Koseff, founding co-director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, is an expert in the interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics. His research falls in the interdisciplinary domain of environmental fluid mechanics and focuses on the interaction between physical and biological systems in natural aquatic environments. Current research activities are in the general area of environmental fluid mechanics and focus on: turbulence and internal wave dynamics in stratified flows, coral reef and sea-grass hydrodynamics, the role of natural systems in coastal protection, and flow through terrestrial and marine canopies. Most recently he has begun to focus on the interaction between gravity currents and breaking internal waves in the near-coastal environment, and the transport of marine microplastics. Koseff was formerly the Chair of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the Senior Associate Dean of Engineering at Stanford, and has served on the Board of Governors of The Israel Institute of Technology, and has been a member of the Visiting Committees of the Civil and Environmental Engineering department at Carnegie-Mellon University, The Iowa Institute of Hydraulic Research, and Cornell University. He has also been a member of review committees for the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, The WHOI-MIT Joint Program, and the University of Minnesota Institute on the Environment. He is a former member of the Independent Science Board of the Bay/Delta Authority. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2015, and received the Richard Lyman Award from Stanford University in the same year. In 2020 he was elected as a Fellow of the California Academy of Sciences. Koseff also served as the Faculty Athletics Representative to the Pac-12 and NCAA for Stanford until July 2024.
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Anthony Kovscek
Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor of Petroleum Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsResearch
Together with my research group, I develop and apply advanced imaging techniques, experimentation, and models to understand complex multiphase flows of gas, water, and organic phases in natural and manufactured porous media with applications in carbon storage, increased utilization of carbon dioxide for subsurface applications, hydrogen storage, and water reuse. In all of our work, physical observations, obtained mainly from laboratory and field measurements, are interwoven with theory.
Teaching
My teaching interests center broadly around education of students to meet the energy challenges that we will face this century. I teach undergraduate courses that examine the interplay of energy use and environmental issues including renewable energy resources and sustainability. At the graduate level, I offer classes on renewable energy processes based on heat and the thermodynamics of hydrocarbon mixtures.
Professional Activities
Member, American Geophysical Union, Society of Petroleum Engineers, and the American Chemical Society.
