Precourt Institute for Energy


Showing 51-60 of 144 Results

  • Thomas Heller

    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.

  • Mark Horowitz

    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

    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.

  • Holmes Hummel, PhD

    Holmes Hummel, PhD

    Managing Director Energy Equity & Just Transitions, Precourt Institute for Energy

    Current Role at StanfordEnergy Equity & Just Transitions, Managing Director
    Precourt Institute for Energy

    Resident Fellow, Explore Energy House

    Coordinating Council Member, Environmental Justice Working Group

    Advisory Member, Partnership in Climate Justice in the Bay


    Collaborator in Collaborative Learning about Equity and Rapid Decarbonization (CLEAR Decarbonization), one of the first projects selected for an award from the Stanford Sustainability Accelerator

  • Hillard Huntington

    Hillard Huntington

    Executive Director, Energy Modeling Forum
    Researcher, Management Science and Engineering - Energy Modeling Forum
    Staff, Management Science and Engineering - Energy Modeling Forum

    BioHuntington 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

    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

    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 seek basic scientific knowledge and use it to help shape policies and reduce the environmental footprint of global warming, energy extraction, and other issues. They're currently examining the effects of climate change and droughts on forest mortality and grassland ecosystems. 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 at more than 80 sites worldwide and measuring and reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells, city streets, and homes and buildings.

    As an author and photographer, Rob has published a 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 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.