Research to accelerate rapid, affordable, and effective transitions to net-zero carbon energy systems

Jesse D. Jenkins is an assistant professor and macro-scale energy systems engineer at Princeton University with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment. He leads the Princeton ZERO Lab (Zero-carbon Energy systems Research and Optimization Laboratory), which focuses on improving and applying optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate and optimize low-carbon energy technologies, guide investment and research in innovative energy technologies, and generate insights to improve energy and climate policy and planning decisions. Dr. Jenkins earned a PhD in Engineering Systems and SM in Technology & Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked previously as a postdoctoral environmental fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and spent six years as an energy and climate policy analyst prior to embarking on his academic career. Dr. Jenkins served on the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine expert committee on Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System, was a principal investigator and lead author of Princeton’s landmark Net-Zero America study, and leads the REPEAT Project, which provides regular, timely, and independent environmental and economic evaluation of federal energy and climate policies as they’re proposed and enacted. Dr. Jenkins has delivered invited testimony to multiple Congressional committees and his research is frequently featured in major media outlets. His work guiding, shaping and evaluating American efforts to transition to clean energy was profiled in the Wall Street Journal, recognized with inclusion on the 2024 TIME100 NEXT list of the next 100 leaders shaping the future, Vox.com’s 2023 Future Perfect 50 list of thinkers, activists, and scholars working on solutions to today’s (and tomorrow’s) biggest problems, and Environmental News Record’s 2022 Top 25 Newsmakers list. He regularly provides technical analysis and policy advice for non-profit organizations, policy makers, investors, and early-stage technology ventures working to accelerate the deployment of clean energy. Dr. Jenkins currently serves on the advisory boards of Eavor Technologies, Rondo Energy and Dig Energy and is a scientific and technical advisor to Energy Impact Partners and MUUS Climate Partners. He is also the co-host of the podcast Shift Key on the energy transition and the shift away from fossil fuels, published by Heatmap News.

Sambuddha Chakrabarti (Sam) is a researcher focused on Mathematical Optimization, Operations Research (OR), Machine Learning, Automatic Controls Theory, and Electric Power System Network. He holds PhD (grad: August, 2017) & MSE (grad: August, 2010) from the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of The University of Texas at Austin (specializing in Energy System/Power System) & has experience in research industry (academia and national lab.), academia (teaching), electrical manufacturing industry, power system generation planning, & electricity trading since July, 2006 to present. He joined the ZERO Lab at Andlinger Center in mid 2020. Before joining Princeton University he was a postdoctoral researcher with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) at Golden, CO. He also interned at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), and Trailstone Energy Commodities Trading as a graduate student. He regularly serves as peer reviewer at several high impact journals, like IEEE Transactions (Power Systems, Smart Grid, Energy Market-Policy-Regulations), Elsevier Science Direct, MDPI, Nature-Energy among others. At ZERO Lab, he coordinates the development and hosting of the GenX open-source capacity expansion planning model and works on answering the research questions pertaining to next generation energy system models.

Qian is a postdoctoral researcher working in the interdisciplinary field of energy system, air quality, and public health. By linking air quality modeling and energy system models and analyzing impacts of various regulations or policies on the energy system and the environment, she tries to provide insights on how to decarbonize the system effectively, while increasing the co-benefits in public health. She previously worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as graduate interns. She received her Ph.D. degree in environmental engineering from the department of Civil, Construction, and the Environment at NC State University in 2023, her M.S. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology, and her B.S. degree from Xiamen University.

Cecelia is a GIS researcher and analyst. She focuses on critical infrastructure with an emphasis on the electrical grid. Her past projects include research into social segregation as it relates to resident wellbeing in metropolitan areas, political campaign messaging by region, and hurricane recovery in Gulf states. She has a B.A. in English and Chinese from the University at Albany, SUNY and an M.S. in Geographic Information Science from the University of Minnesota. Previously, she worked at U-Spatial as GIS coordinator on hazard mitigation reporting for Minnesota counties. At Princeton, she supports the ZERO Lab as well as the Energy Systems Analysis Group. Her current projects include pipeline routing for carbon capture and storage, and renewables siting in India.

Dasun is a researcher working at the juncture of energy, climate, and cities. In ZERO Lab, his activities mainly focus on developing the MACRO (multi-sector capacity expansion model) to facilitate industry decarbonization. Before joining Princeton, he was a Postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab ( with Dr. Tianzhen Hong & Prof. Kenichi Soga at UC Berkeley). He also worked as a postdoc and a Ph.D. student at ETH-Empa and EPFL, Switzerland. Dasun is a regular reviewer for Nature Energy, Joule, Nature Climate Change, etc., and works as an editorial board member for Applied Energy. He is a recipient of the President’s Award for Scientific Publications (Sri Lanka in 15′ & 19′), and the Outstanding Paper Award in Applied Energy Conference (’17). His work has been covered in over 30 media outlets in the US, Europe, and Australia

Filippo Pecci is an Associate Research Scholar of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. His research focuses on developing optimization methods for optimal design and control of complex network systems, providing decision support to accelerate transition to net-zero emission and resilient infrastructure systems. Filippo’s interests include mixed-integer optimization, global optimization, and decomposition methods for solving large-scale optimization problems. He is a member of ZERO Lab, working on computationally efficient methods to optimize planning and operation decisions in macro-energy systems. Filippo earned a PhD from Imperial College London, where he was also a postdoctoral research associate. At Imperial, his work focused on mixed-integer optimization for the design-for-control of resilient water supply systems. Prior to starting his PhD, Filippo received BSc and MSc degrees in Mathematics from the University of Padua (Italy).

Aniruddh Mohan is currently a Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, working with Eric Larson and Jesse Jenkins. Aniruddh holds a PhD in Engineering & Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University. His research has been published in peer reviewed journals such as Nature Energy, Environmental Science & Technology, and Climate Policy and received media coverage in several news outlets including The New York Times, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal. His work at Princeton is focused on the system-level impacts of emerging technologies such as direct air capture in deep decarbonization pathways. He works with rich geospatial datasets using modelling tools such as optimization and agent-based modelling to understand the space for new technologies to contribute to addressing environmental challenges.

Greg Schivley is a Senior Software Engineer in the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University and a member of the ZERO Lab. As the primary developer of PowerGenome he creates open data for capacity expansion models and the open-source software tools to transform that data into model inputs. Greg completed a PhD (‘18) and Masters (‘07) in Civil and Environmental Enginnering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Luca is a Research Software Engineer in the ZERO Lab and a member of the Princeton Research Computing department. Luca’s work focuses on developing the GenX capacity expansion model and the MACRO multi-sector capacity expansion model and on providing support for the maintenance of the group software. Luca obtained his Ph.D. in the Science of Advanced Materials, an MSc in high-performance computing, a BSc, and an MSc in physics, and worked as a software engineer.

Avery Barnett is from Kingston, Jamaica, and is a 3rd year Ph.D. Student in the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. She realized her energy interests during her undergraduate tenure at Grinnell College where she graduated with a BA in Physics with concentrations in Technology Studies and Environmental Studies. Her research interests involve modeling electricity trading among Caribbean island nations, understanding the sociopolitics of the energy transition within the region, and analyzing the impacts of natural hazard risk on future energy mixes and the benefits that electricity trading can have to mitigate the effects of these disasters. Her involvement in the energy sector has led her to embark upon field experiences in Costa Rica, Nepal, and Barbados, energy-related internships with companies in the United States and Barbados. Most recently, Avery was named an IRENA Youth Delegate and participated in the 2023 IRENA Youth Forum, and has been named a New Jersey Offshore Wind Fellow, and a Macro-Energy Systems Fellow. Outside of academics, Avery is involved in creating equitable and safe spaces within her department and she enjoys playing the harp and the steel pans, traveling, baking, and embroidering.

Margot is a first year PhD student in the Science Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) cluster of the School of Public and International Affairs, advised by Dr. Michael Oppenheimer and Dr. Jesse Jenkins. Margot’s research interests lie in macro-energy systems modeling and energy policy evaluation. She is aiming to develop skills in understanding and assessing energy and environmental policies in order to decarbonize the electricity generation sector and to achieve various climate goals, in both the US and abroad. She is particularly interested in analyzing the social, economic, and political implications of different decarbonization pathways. Her academic and career goals are to meaningfully contribute to a clean energy transition that is affordable, reliable, sustainable, and equitable. Before coming to Princeton, Margot graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington, concentrating in sustainable power systems. She has also completed an internship with the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in 2022 as a regional transmission planning intern, as well as several other internships with the Office of Naval Research since 2019.

Edmund Downie is a PhD student in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. His research seeks to identify politically durable pathways for deep decarbonization in China and India by using tools from political science and energy-systems modeling. He is a co-author of the Guide to Chinese Climate Policy 2022 (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies) and has authored or co-authored peer-reviewed publications with CGEP, the Made in China Journal, and the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). He has also written for the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, the Wire China, and Utility Dive and served as a topic expert for delegations of US elected officials visiting China. Before joining SPIA, Edmund held fellowships at think-tanks in New York, Delhi, and Calcutta and served as a senior analyst at Analysis Group in Boston. He was also a Fulbright Scholar at Yunnan University in China (2017-18). He received an MPhil in International Relations at Nuffield College, Oxford as a Marshall Scholar (2017) and a B.A. in Ethics, Politics, and Economics from Yale University (2014).

Godwin is a PhD student(G1) in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department and member of the Princeton ZERO Lab. His current broad interests lie at the nexus of technology, policy and business, and their roles in accelerating the decarbonization of large economies, and expanding clean energy access in emerging economies. Prior to Princeton, Godwin interned at Egbin Power Plc, West Africa’s largest power generating company; co-founded a startup through the Rockefeller Foundation-Acumen student social enterprise accelerator; graduate interned at Procter and Gamble; and worked at Bisedge Limited, a green logistics startup expanding electric mobility across Africa and the Middle East. Godwin earned his B.Eng degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he was a Shell Scholar. Among others, he is a recipient of the Rockefeller Foundation-Acumen student social innovation challenge award in 2020 and was named one of Top 100 Africa’s Brightest Young Minds in 2021.

Mohamed is a Moroccan PhD student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department. His research interests span emerging clean technologies, feasible and just pathways for industrial decarbonization, energy policy and decarbonization challenges in emerging economies. Before coming to Princeton, Mohamed completed a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics and physics at Ecole Polytechnique in France.

Gabriel Mantegna is a PhD student in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering studying energy systems engineering and policy. His research is focused on developing methods for electric grid planning that will help to increase the resilience of the electric grid to climate change. He previously worked at Energy and Environmental Economics (E3), a consulting firm based in San Francisco, where he advised state agencies and electric utilities on their decarbonization plans.

Oladoyin Phillips is a Nigerian PhD Student in the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA). Her research focuses on understanding how the political economy of sub-Saharan countries, particularly fossil fuel exporters like Nigeria, can enhance the formulation of their energy transition and development pathways. The goal is to apply these insights when using Macro-Energy System models to plan for the expansion of Net-Zero electricity systems. Oladoyin has written publications for the African Development Bank as a Consultant in the Energy Financial Solutions, Policy & Regulation Complex. She earned her Meng in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University in 2019, and B.S.E. in Operations Research and Financial Engineering from Princeton University in 2014. She has worked in Nigeria, India, and the UK, on logistics, data engineering, and SME advisory solutions.

Wilson Ricks is a PhD candidate in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and a reseacher at ZERO Lab where he focuses on evaluation of emerging clean energy technologies and energy policy design. He is also an HMEI-STEP Graduate Fellow in Science, Technology & Environmental Policy.

Malini is a doctoral candidate in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs. Her research revolves around India’s clean energy transition and the engineering constraints, land use conflicts, and institutional challenges associated with deploying renewable energy at scale. At ZERO Lab, she develops datasets to support GenX-India and provides technical support for the Net Zero India project. Prior to Princeton, Malini obtained a B.S. in Earth and Environmental Engineering from Columbia University and worked as a senior consultant at Ramboll, an environmental consultancy, on air pollution modeling and climate mitigation for major urban development, industrial, and logistics projects.

Anna Li is an energy systems researcher and PhD student in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. Her research is focused on using optimization-based methods to guide climate and energy policy. Anna graduated from Caltech in 2023 with a self-directed major in Engineering and Applied Sciences, in which she studied the chemistry behind energy technologies, as well as quantitative methods that can be applied to model energy systems. During her undergraduate research at Caltech, Anna modeled how various portfolios of energy storage technologies may help reduce total costs of an energy system reliant on solar and wind energy. Anna is also an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.

Anna Jacobson is a PhD candidate in the Program on Quantitative & Computational Biology at Princeton University and a researcher at ZERO Lab focused on environmental policy and energy systems. She is also an HMEI-STEP Graduate Fellow in Science, Technology & Environmental Policy.

Michael Lau is a PhD candidate in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University and a researcher in the ZERO Lab, where he focuses on methods to explore the near-optimal feasible region of energy systems planning problems and provide decision support on trade-offs and options in the transition to net-zero emissions. He is also an HMEI-STEP Graduate Fellow in Science, Technology & Environmental Policy.

Yujie Wu is a PhD candidate in the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy (STEP) Program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. He is co-supervised by Prof. Denise Mauzerall and Prof. Jesse Jenkins and his research focuses on evaluating the role of hydrogen in decarbonizing energy systems, including technology policy and impacts on the environment and human health. Yujie was born and raised in Luoyang, which is one of the most historical cities in China. Before coming to Princeton, Yujie received his master’s degree in environmental science from Zhejiang University and earned his bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering, with a second major in business administration, from Southwest Jiaotong University. His previous research focused on using chemical transport models and other numerical models to characterize air pollution in China.

Dr. Erin Mayfield is the Hodgson Family Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College in the Thayer School of Engineering. Her research is in the areas of sustainable systems engineering and public policy. Her research ocuses on three interacting research themes: multiobjective modeling, intergenerational & social equity, and climate mitigation & adaptation planning. The aim of her research is to develop computational decision support tools to address real-world problems and facilitate multi-stakeholder decision-making processes. Dr. Mayfield was an Associate Research Scholar and Postdoctoral Research Associate at ZERO Lab and the Energy Systems Analysis Group at Princeton University from 2019-2021, where she participated in several large-scale collaborations on infrastructure transitions, including the Net-Zero America Project and the REPEAT Project. She currently serves as a co-author of the Fifth National Climate Assessment and her research is regularly covered in national and local media such as the New York Times, The Atlantic, and National Public Radio. Mayfield has received several awards for her research such as the Rob Socolow Best Paper Award, American Chemical Society Editor’s Choice Award, and the Herbert L. Toor Doctoral Research Award. Prior to academia, Mayfield was a practitioner working with and in vulnerable communities on hazardous waste remediation, environmental litigation, and infrastructure planning. She has also held positions at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Congress, Princeton University, and Environmental Law Institute. She received her doctoral degree in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, masters in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and bachelors in environmental science from Rutgers University.

Dr. Chuan Zhang is a researcher and assistant professor at the Institute of Energy, Peking University. His research focuses on the application of complexity modeling in energy system analysis and optimization, carbon neutrality technology path design based on optimization models, and resource energy and environmental management strategies and policies. He holds a joint PhD from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the University of Cambridge. From 2019-2021, Dr. Zhang was a postdoctoral researcher scholar at Princeton University with the ZERO Lab and Energy Systems Analysis Group. He joined the Institute of Energy, Peking University in 2022.

Dr. Jacob A. Schwartz is a staff research physicist at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. He previously worked as a postdoctoral research scholar at Princeton University, working with the Plasma Control Group to develop an open-source “systems code” for tokamaks and with ZERO Lab to study fusion’s value as part of future electricity markets and contributed to the development of the open-source GenX electricity system planning model. He earned his doctorate in Princeton’s Program in Plasma Physics, where his thesis work focused on developing a piece of technology with application for nuclear fusion reactors.

Fangwei is a researcher working with both ZERO lab and Energy Systems Analysis Group. She is interested in utilizing, enhancing, and developing advanced decision support tools to evaluate and optimize decarbonization technologies for a sustainable energy transition and offer insight for technological advancement and policy prioritization. At Princeton, she is working on technology evaluation of flexible carbon capture and storage and carbon accounting of forest-based bioenergy. She obtained her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Wuhan Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Qingyu worked as a Postdoc Associate in the ZERO lab during 2020-2022. He now (by 2023) works as a researcher in Energy Internet Research Institute, Tsinghua University. Qingyu focuses his research on decarbonization policies and market designs of China’s power sector. Qingyu received his Ph.D. and M.S. at the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. He received his bachelor’s degree at Sun Yat-sen University, China.

Aneesha is a Kanders Churchill Scholar pursuing a Master’s in Public Policy at the University of Cambridge (2023-2024). She was a research assistant in the Zero-carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization Lab for three years as an undergraduate at Princeton University (2020-2023), where she completed her Bachelor of Science and Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering and received certificates in Statistics and Machine Learning, Optimization and Quantitative Decision Science, Environmental Studies, and Sustainable Energy. Following this year, she will be conducting her PhD in the Energy & Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley. During her time in the ZERO lab, she worked on three projects: 1) utilizing GenX to analyze coal retirement decisions in India, 2) assessing the role of co-located renewable energy and energy storage installations to understand how the strategic siting of batteries could offset transmission reinforcements needed, and 3) identifying early market opportunities for long-duration energy storage in the American West. Beyond her research experience, she has interned with the Department of Energy, Centre for Social & Economic Progress, Prospect14, and RMI. She has been awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, High Meadows Environmental Institute Environmental Scholarship, and the Udall Scholarship Honorable Mention.

Neha Patankar’s expertise is in multi-attribute computational modeling and decision-making for energy transition, focusing on the rapidly evolving electricity sector. Her research supports energy policy decisions under deep techno-economic uncertainty, reveals system-wide technology and resource tradeoffs, and evaluates pathways for economy-wide decarbonization. Before joining Binghamton University, she earned a PhD in Operations Research from North Carolina State University and served as an associate research scholar at Princeton University. During this time, she worked on the REPEAT and Open Energy Outlook projects. These projects provide a regular, timely, and independent environmental and economic evaluation of federal energy and climate policies.

Vinay Konuru earned his undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University in 2024.

Maya is currently a data scientist at electronRx and worked as an Assistant Researcher in the ZERO Lab from 2023-2024. Her research involves combining machine learning and optimization methods for the GenX capacity expansion problem. Prior to joining the lab, she was a master’s student in the department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton, and obtained her BS in Applied and Computational Math from Caltech in 2021