2025 Summer Summit Cohort

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Joy Adul is a third-year doctoral researcher at Pennsylvania State University with a background in Chemical Engineering and over a decade of experience in the energy sector. She specializes in examining the intricate interplay between climate change and renewable energy systems. Her research delves into the multifaceted impacts of climate change on renewable energy generation, with the goal of enhancing the resilience, efficiency, and sustainability of energy systems in an evolving global landscape. Additionally, Joy leverages advanced theoretical methods and computational approaches to investigate innovative materials for renewable energy applications, driving transformative solutions for a sustainable future.

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Yasmin Afshar is a fourth‑year PhD scholar in the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. With a background in sustainable urban development and planning, she serves as a researcher at the Center for Energy and Society, where she studies the societal implications of energy projects. She is interested in working at the nexus of science, policy, and practice. Her dissertation explores the social challenges of the electric‑mobility transition, focusing on EV‑charging infrastructure. She has had conversations with a range of intermediary organizations—including Arizona utilities, the regional transportation authority, municipalities, and local governments—to understand the challenges and opportunities of planning and deploying EV‑charging infrastructure in the Phoenix metro area.

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Mathieu Blondeel is an Assistant Professor of Global Energy & Climate Politics at the Institute for Environmental Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands). He obtained a PhD in International Relations at Ghent University (Belgium), studying international 'anti-fossil fuel norms'. Following that, he held a position as a postdoctoral Research Fellow at Warwick Business School (UK). Currently, his research is situated at the intersection of global energy and climate politics, primarily specializing in energy geopolitics and the political economy of the global oil & gas industry. He further teaches in a variety of Master's and Bachelor's programmes at VU Amsterdam. Outside academia, Mathieu has extensive experience with consultancy and policy research. He has written reports for environmental NGOs such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and think tanks such as the Foundation of European Progressive Studies (FEPS) and Chatham House. In his free time, he loves running and football (the European version).

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Brendan Davidson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. Trained in environmental politics from both global and comparative perspectives, he specializes in environmental labor studies, critical political economy, and the political ecology of labor in the energy transition. His current research compares various eco-social visions of the transition with the actual practices of work and production associated with alternative energy technologies, especially wind energy technologies, doing so primarily in the Western US and Nordic contexts. Prior to pursuing a PhD, Brendan worked for several organizations that inform his research interests, including the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, National Park Service, and Colorado's Human Trafficking Council housed within the state's Office for Victims Programs. Brendan holds an MPA in Environmental Policy and a BA in Geography and Philosophy. In addition to his work as a scholar, Brendan works for the Center for New Energy Economy, also affiliated with Colorado State University.

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Ayda Donne is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at NYU and the Director of Grants and Research at Eighth Generation Consulting. His research centers on the relationship between Indigenous sovereignty, energy infrastructure, U.S. nuclear testing, and ideologies of containment and contamination.

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S. Mohsen Fatemi is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas. His research examines how regulatory environments and institutional configurations influence energy justice outcomes within U.S. electric utilities. Employing a mixed-methods approach—including the development of regulatory typologies, content analysis, structure-learning algorithms, and stakeholder interviews—his work investigates plausible causal pathways to distributive, procedural, and recognition justice outcomes. Mohsen brings a multidisciplinary background in public administration, urban planning, and architecture, unified by a sustained focus on energy-related issues such as energy governance and policy, energy efficiency, climate action planning, sustainability rating systems, and sustainable design. He currently serves on the Environmental Sustainability Advisory Board for the City of Lawrence, Kansas, where he advocates for energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy justice initiatives. Additionally, he serves as Co-Director of the Secretariat for the Public Management Research Association (PMRA).

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Adam Gallaher is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment at Cornell University. His research examines sustainability trade-offs in the U.S. energy transition, with a particular focus on the intersection of renewable energy development, land use, and socio-ecological systems. His current work informs integrated assessment and planning approaches for utility-scale solar siting, biodiversity conservation, and agricultural land management. Dr. Gallaher holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Connecticut, where he was an NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) fellow and served as a graduate representative for the Energy and Environment Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers. His doctoral research addressed multiple dimensions of the energy transition, including comparative analyses of offshore wind development, regional drivers of electric vehicle adoption, and ecosystem services of solar energy projects. Dr. Gallaher earned an M.S. and B.S. from Central Michigan University in Geographic Information Science and Environmental Studies and has published his work in peer-reviewed journals, edited collections, and public outreach venues.

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Mel George is a postdoctoral associate at the Center for Global Sustainability, Univ. of Maryland and an electrical engineer by training whose diverse research interests are at the intersection of technology and energy-climate policies, and their implications for sustainable development and broader human well-being. He is especially interested in incorporating political and social science dimensions into modeling. He also works on international compliance and voluntary carbon markets and energy policy in India. George has worked and collaborated with many multinational teams, including at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria under the prestigious Young Scientist's Program, CIRED (Paris), CMCC-EIEE (Italy) and is the recipient of multiple awards and fellowships, including from the US National Science Foundation. He has won multiple Outstanding Reviewer recognitions for journals in the energy and social sciences. He served on the UMD Senate Committees on DEI and is presently on the Programs & Curricula Committee. 

Before completing his Ph.D. in Policy Studies at the University of Maryland, George spent almost a decade with different public sector organizations under the government of India and gained wide-ranging experience in multiple domains from research and development, engineering and construction, administration to strategy and energy policy in the oil and gas sector. He graduated summa cum laude with a Master of Technology in Energy Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India.

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Tommy George holds a PhD in Materials Science & Mechanical Engineering from Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. This fall, they are starting as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at The Cooper Union in New York City. Their graduate research focused on membranes and electrolytes for aqueous electrochemical flow reactors toward sustainable energy storage and CO2 removal. Tommy was a Pedagogy Fellow with Harvard's Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, working in this role as a peer-mentor for other graduate students in teaching positions. They hold a B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Tufts University, and did undergraduate research focused on catalysis for hydrogen fuel cells. Additionally, Tommy has several years of experience designing and leading hands-on engineering learning experiences for public school elementary students in the Boston area, with the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. They are interested in how electrochemical technologies may contribute to decarbonization, and they are excited about how STEM education can expand and transform while centering environmental justice along with inclusive and accessible pedagogies for all students.

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Smitakshi Goswami is a Graduate Student in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Dartmouth College working with Prof Jifeng Liu on the experimental investigation of Sustainable and novel Solar Absorber Materials. After successful materials Characterization we are marching into establishing high performance devices which are in the best interest of the surrounding environment.

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Prabhat Hegde is a PhD candidate in Operations Research at the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College. During his PhD, Prabhat has worked on multi-layer network theory to model interdependent infrastructure systems, designing rural school bus routes and schedules, and decision analyses in climate risk management problems. Before transitioning back to being in school, Prabhat worked at the intersection of the energy and transportation sectors, conducting industrial research on sustainable fuels and emissions reduction technologies. Prabhat holds a Master's degree in Energy and Products from École nationale supérieure du pétrole et des moteurs and a Bachelor's of Technology in Mechanical Engineering from Manipal Institute of Technology.

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Junsuh Kim is a first-year Ph.D. student and NSF graduate research fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT. His research interests concern the materials chemistry of renewable energy storage/conversion devices, with past research experiences including the electrochemistry of 2D materials, hydrogen-driven microactuators, and lithium-air battery electrolytes. Junsuh is also interested in technology policy and helps create student policy opportunities as a Paragon Policy Fellowship outreach coordinator. Long-term, he seeks to pursue a career in science policy to forge techno-economically informed, meaningful exchange between academic research and policy implementation. Outside of research, Junsuh is involved with STEM education, and he's currently developing hands-on chemistry/materials science lab curricula adaptable for students inside prison facilities.

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Rafael Lembi is a community-engaged researcher and sustainability scholar working with the topics of energy justice, energy sovereignty and energy commons in the Brazilian Amazon. For my PhD, I am examining the impacts of gaining access to electricity via renewable, decentralized photovoltaic systems, as experienced by traditional and Indigenous communities who live in isolated areas of the forest. My qualitative work is examining how varying degrees of community participation and engagement can influence the impacts of off-grid electrification projects. Ultimately, I seek to co-produce actionable knowledge that can inform the implementation of more just, sustainable, equitable and anti-colonial energy transitions at the local scale. 

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Maitreyee Marathe is a Lecturer in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research focuses on optimization and control of power and energy systems. She draws on tools from modeling and simulation, hardware prototyping and field deployment, and user-centric translational methods. She has worked on developing energy access solutions for resource-constrained environments such as off-grid rural communities, people experiencing homelessness, medically fragile families, and low-income prepaid electricity customers. She completed her PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a minor in Energy Analysis and Policy.

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Rodrigo Mercado Fernández is an Assistant Professor at Loyola University Chicago in the School of Environmental Sustainability and a Fulbright Scholar. He holds a PhD in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Rodrigo's research focuses on sustainable energy pathways, the integration of renewable energy, and energy policy and decision-making. His work has been published in journals such as Energy and Climate Change and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition, where he has explored expansion plans for the Mexican electrical grid to support decarbonization goals and analyzed the sustainability implications of various decarbonization pathways.

Currently, Rodrigo leads a collaborative project with faculty from Appalachian State University focused on quantifying the impacts of power outages on health outcomes, examining how geographic and socioeconomic factors influence vulnerability. This research aims to support marginalized communities and guide equitable policy responses to climate change. His academic work integrates equity, justice, and sustainability, with a commitment to addressing global energy challenges.

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Jorge is an interdisciplinary scholar dedicated to addressing energy and environmental challenges with input from community and stakeholder engagement, as well as geospatial analysis. He holds a PhD in Sustainable Energy from Arizona State University, where he also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. His research explores the role of engagement in various aspects of energy transitions, such as public acceptance of solar technologies and the use of energy modeling to understand community transportation needs. He currently collaborates in a project that examines the effects of utility-scale solar and wind power on Mexico's wholesale electricity market during extreme weather events, such as the 2021 Texas storm. He is also interested in how narratives and academic literature shape our understanding of the past and the Indigenous history within our communities. His overarching goal is to produce research that supports and inspires practices that realize a sustainable and prosperous future.

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Nathaniel Otjen is Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Studies at Ramapo College. Working across the environmental humanities and anthropology, he studies the contestations that arise over renewable energy development and how extraction projects associated with renewable technologies harm vulnerable communities and ecologies. Within these research areas, he examines how narratives produce dominant energy paths that are then difficult to challenge, how communities pursue justice outside the courts, and how researchers can develop public-facing and impactful stories about community resistance and resilience. He has co-developed a podcast called Mining for the Climate which examines how plans for a new lithium mine in Gaston County, North Carolina, and Humboldt County, Nevada, are impacting rural and Indigenous communities. The podcast situates domestic lithium mining within longer narratives and histories of capitalist extraction, technological progress, and settler colonialism. He is also developing a project that examines the collisions between offshore wind farms, migratory whales, and global shipping routes along the Mid-Atlantic Coast. Before joining the faculty at Ramapo College, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University. He holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences, Studies, and Policy from the University of Oregon. To learn more about his work, please visit nathanielotjen.com.

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Joanna Ridgeway is a terrestrial biogeochemist who studies how ecosystems respond and feed back to climate change. My background is in environmental engineering and ecological restoration, and I have a PhD in Biology studying plant-microbe-soil interactions and ecosystem carbon and nutrient cycling at West Virginia University. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in Dartmouth's Department of Biological Sciences.  My research asks questions like "Can bioenergy agriculture sustainably displace fossil fuel emissions through restoring soil carbon?", "How do plant roots and their symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi regulate soil organic matter formation and retention?", "How will winter climate change impact soil ecosystem services?", and "Can modeling plant-microbe interactions and soil microbial processes help us better understand and predict ecosystem feedbacks to climate change?".

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Leobardo Rodriguez Segura is a Vagelos Institute for Energy Science and Technology (VIEST) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. His research targets the conversion of underutilized hydrocarbon feedstocks to high-value commodity chemicals using electrochemistry as a renewable driving force.

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Rachel Sheinberg is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles's (UCLA's) Institute of Environment and Sustainability. Her doctoral research focuses on energy equity through the lenses of electricity pricing and grid decarbonization. She works with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power on LA's Equity Strategies effort, bringing together engineering, policy, law, and social science to envision a more just energy transition. Prior to coming to UCLA, Rachel earned her bachelor's degree in environmental engineering at Brown University, and worked as a project developer at Sunwealth, an impact-focused solar financing firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

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Felipe is a third year Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University in the City of New York. His research interests include electricity market design and energy systems optimization, as well as the structure and organization of financial markets in the context of the energy transition. His current work tackles resource allocation, algorithmic pricing and contract design under long-term climate risk, as well as financial intermediation in the presence of externalities. He was a member of the inaugural cohort of the Global Energy Fellowship at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy. Prior to graduate school, Felipe held an adjunct professor position at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and co-designed and co-taught a course on Climate and Energy Policy for Stanford University's Bing Overseas Study Program in Santiago. Felipe also worked on the rollout of public policy in energy, transportation, innovation, and sustainability at the Chilean Ministry of Energy.

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Kester is a PhD candidate in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on household energy equity, energy spikes during extreme temperature events, and affordable residential electrification. He employs mixed methods, including machine learning, energy diaries and surveys, to analyze shifts in energy consumption before and after external shocks, and to investigate the impact of electric appliance retrofits on energy insecurity, thermal comfort, and well-being in low-income renting populations. Previously, Kester was a Senior Associate at Rocky Mountain Institute, where he researched rural electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on demand stimulation in Ethiopia and project planning in Malawi. He holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. His experiences in equity, development, sustainability, and energy issues span the US, Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Kester is passionate about economic development, energy security, urban resilience, and interconnected problems.

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Julia Wagner is a Postdoctoral Associate at Boston University, where her research focuses on decarbonization and climate resiliency policies as they relate to housing. Julia uses social science research methods to better understand the challenges of transferring public climate finance to households and has worked closely with residents living in limited-equity cooperatives in NYC to advance policy solutions for energy-efficiency retrofits in affordable multi-family residential buildings. As a member of the Boston University Public Impact Scholars cohort, Julia is invested in creating research in partnership with practitioners and movement leaders to inform and enhance policy decisions. Julia also serves as a junior fellow with the Climate & Community Institute, where she develops industrial policies for green social housing construction and preservation. In her work, Julia is interested in advancing housing justice as a framework for shaping climate policy. Julia holds a PhD from Clark University, where her research was supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award.

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Dania Wright is a Postdoctoral Scholar at Arizona State University. Her current research is funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and focuses on integrating environmental and energy justice (EEJ) into engineering practice. This work bridges academia, industry, and policy, developing frameworks to help engineering firms and government agencies assess, justify, and implement EEJ-focused initiatives within business and community contexts. She received her PhD in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology from Arizona State University in 2024, where her dissertation examined how federal research funding mechanisms—particularly the NSF Merit Review criteria—shape institutional and researcher priorities, and earned a University Graduate Fellowship Award for outstanding graduate research at the departmental level. Prior to academia, Dr. Wright worked extensively in science communication and informal education, including as Science Producer for Bill Nye Saves the World, and as a Content Specialist at the Arizona Science Center, where she served as a Walton Sustainability in Science and Technology Museums Fellow. Dr. Wright is committed to advancing interdisciplinary, equity-driven approaches to engineering and energy transitions, and to helping others understand, value, and apply complex concepts in ways that drive meaningful change.

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Yuting Yang is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of New Mexico. She employs economic tools such as theoretical modeling, empirical analysis, simulation methods, and benefit-cost analysis to evaluate the impact of climate policies on decarbonization and renewable energy investment. Her research centers on promoting an efficient and equitable clean energy transition, with a focus on how climate policies drive electricity sector decarbonization, the equity of energy transition incentives in the residential sector, and the economic feasibility of emerging clean energy technologies. Her recent work has been published in leading interdisciplinary and economics journals, including Nature Energy, Environmental Science & Technology, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. She also serves as a young editorial member for Applied Energy. 

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Weimin Zhang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth & Environment at Boston University, specializing in energy and climate policy analysis. Her research lies at the intersection of industrial decarbonization, energy justice, and equity, critically examining how global decarbonization strategies influence both climate outcomes and the distribution of social benefits and burdens. She is particularly interested in how policies can be designed to support just and inclusive energy transitions, and how citizens' voices and equity considerations can be better integrated into national and international climate governance. She employs a mixed-methods approach—combining econometric modeling, quantitative meta-analysis, and qualitative approaches—to evaluate the effectiveness of industrial decarbonization policies and uncover their equity implications across diverse global contexts. Her interdisciplinary training allows her to engage with complex socio-technical systems and contribute to both theoretical and applied research in the field of energy transitions. In addition to her research, Weimin also serves as a Teaching Fellow for Environmental Modeling and Quantitative Methods courses, where she applies R programming to strengthen analytical skills in environmental research. She actively participates in interdisciplinary collaborations aimed at informing and shaping policies that support sustainable and equitable energy transitions worldwide.

The mission of the New Energy Summer Summit is to increase the capacity of early-stage energy and climate researchers to accelerate transitions to equitable and sustainable energy systems and a healthy climate via interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration. Read more.