Precourt Institute for Energy
Showing 81-100 of 172 Results
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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. -
Arpita Kalra
Marketing and Engagement Director, Precourt Institute for Energy
BioArpita Kalra is the Director for Marketing and Engagement at Precourt Institute for Energy. In this role she oversees the engagement and outreach efforts for the Stanford Energy brand. Prior to Stanford, she worked in the advertising industry where she developed and executed marketing campaigns across print, electronic and social media. Arpita holds a masters in Marketing Communications from the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA) in India and a bachelors in Statistics from Delhi University.
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Matthew Kanan
Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy
BioMatt Kanan is a Professor of Chemistry and Senior Fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy at Stanford. Matt’s research group works across multiple fields of chemistry and engineering with applications for sustainable plastics, critical mineral recovery, and carbon management. Their work has led to several inventions in these areas, including new performance-advantaged bioplastics, electrochemical systems to recycle acid and base, metal-free catalysts for C1 transformations, and thermal mineral conversion processes. Matt is the co-founder of ReSource Chemical Corp., an Oakland-based start-up commercializing manufacturing technology developed in his lab, and Mafix, Inc., a spin-out developing mineral fertilizers that remove CO2 from the atmosphere. 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. -
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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Karalee Elizabeth Kokeny
Assistant Director for Finance, Precourt Institute for Energy
Current Role at StanfordFinancial Analyst, Precourt Institute for Energy
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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. -
Sanjay Lall
Professor of Electrical Engineering
BioSanjay Lall is Professor of Electrical Engineering in the Information Systems Laboratory and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. He received a B.A. degree in Mathematics with first-class honors in 1990 and a Ph.D. degree in Engineering in 1995, both from the University of Cambridge, England. His research group focuses on algorithms for control, optimization, and machine learning. Before joining Stanford he was a Research Fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the Department of Control and Dynamical Systems, and prior to that he was a NATO Research Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. He was also a visiting scholar at Lund Institute of Technology in the Department of Automatic Control. He has significant industrial experience applying advanced algorithms to problems including satellite systems, advanced audio systems, Formula 1 racing, the America's cup, cloud services monitoring, and integrated circuit diagnostic systems, in addition to several startup companies. Professor Lall has served as Associate Editor for the journal Automatica, on the steering and program committees of several international conferences, and as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, DARPA, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He is the author of over 130 peer-refereed publications.
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Philip Levis
Professor of Computer Science and of Electrical Engineering
On Partial Leave from 10/01/2025 To 06/30/2026BioProfessor Levis' research focuses on the design and implementation of efficient software systems for embedded wireless sensor networks; embedded network sensor architecture and design; systems programming and software engineering.
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Raymond Levitt
Kumagai Professor in the School of Engineering, Emeritus
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsDr. Levitt founded and directs Stanford’s Global Projects Center (GPC), which conducts research, education and outreach to enhance financing, governance and sustainability of global building and infrastructure projects. Dr. Levitt's research focuses on developing enhanced governance of infrastructure projects procured via Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) delivery, and alternative project delivery approaches for complex buildings like full-service hospitals or data centers.
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Mike Lin
Director for Advancing Energy Ecopreneurship, Precourt Institute for Energy
Biohttps://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeltlin/
Mike Lin is an investor, engineer, and serial entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience in design thinking, startups, and venture capital. Mike is a Lecturer at Stanford's Doerr School of Sustainability, where he teaches SUST 234: Integrative Design and Entrepreneurship for Sustainability.
Mike is also co-founder and General Partner at Dangerous Ventures. Dangerous invests in early-stage startups building a more sustainable and resilient future. Dangerous focuses on scalable systems-transforming solutions that empower people, the planet, and society to be more resilient and thrive in a rapidly changing environment.
Prior to working in venture capital, he was Founder and CEO of Fenix International, a renewable energy and fintech startup that currently powers over 15.5 million people across nine countries. He raised over $45M in venture capital and venture debt, developed patented energy technologies, and forged strategic partnerships with Google and the world’s largest mobile telecoms, including Vodafone, Orange, and MTN, to deliver life-changing energy to frontier markets. Fenix grew to over 350 employees and was successfully acquired in April 2018 by Engie, one of the world’s largest utilities.
Mike believes that business can be a vehicle for positive change, combining his passion for social and environmental prosperity with design thinking, business strategy, and new product development. He is a serial entrepreneur and worked at Makani Power (acquired by Google) and Squid Labs, a startup studio (Instructables, acquired by Autodesk). He has worked with Apple on climate change and environmental technologies, Al Gore on the “Inconvenient Truth” presentation, and lectured on green design and entrepreneurship at Stanford and Yale.
Mike has six patents, has received over $1.7M in grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency and UK Government, awards from the Rockefeller Foundation, Aspen Institute, BusinessWeek, and Popular Science, and has been featured in The New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Wired, The Guardian, and others. Mike earned an MS and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.
He is an Eagle Scout, a champion Junior Olympic Archer, and co-founder of the Stanford University Archery team. He enjoys spending time with his family outdoors, mountain biking, growing food, and cooking over an open fire. -
Aaron Lindenberg
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and of Photon Science
BioLindenberg's research is focused on visualizing the ultrafast dynamics and atomic-scale structure of materials on femtosecond and picosecond time-scales. X-ray and electron scattering and spectroscopic techniques are combined with ultrafast optical techniques to provide a new way of taking snapshots of materials in motion. Current research is focused on the dynamics of phase transitions, ultrafast properties of nanoscale materials, and charge transport, with a focus on materials for information storage technologies, energy-related materials, and nanoscale optoelectronic devices.
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David Lobell
Benjamin M. Page Professor, William Wrigley Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Current Research and Scholarly InterestsWe study the interactions between food production, food security, and the environment using a range of modern tools.
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Amory B Lovins
Senior Precourt Scholar for Integrative Design and Energy Efficiency
Current Role at StanfordAdjunct Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Sept 2019 – June 2024, then retitled Lecturer in CEE, with the same responsibilities, because the definition changed and Lovins lacks a PhD. Visiting Scholar, Precourt Institute for Energy.
