Valerie Karplus

ASSociate PROFESSOR, Carnegie Mellon University

2019 Education Award Winner

Valerie Karplus is an Associate Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, where she studies resource and environmental management in firms operating in diverse national and industry contexts, with a focus on the role of institutions and management practices in explaining performance. She is an expert on China’s energy system, including technology and business model innovation, energy system governance, and the management of air pollution and climate change. She works with a collaborative team of researchers to study the micro and macro determinants of clean energy transitions, with a focus on China and India, and she is co-developing a new course on Global Energy Markets and Policy. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, she was an Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Sloan School of Management, and she remains a faculty affiliate of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the MIT Energy Initiative, and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. From 2011 to 2015, she directed the MIT–Tsinghua China Energy and Climate Project, a five-year research effort focused on analyzing the design of energy and climate change policy in China and its domestic and global impacts. She has made lasting positive impacts on the lives and careers of her students through her mentorship and the research opportunities she facilitates. Karplus holds a BS in Biochemistry and Political Science from Yale University and a PhD in Engineering Systems from MIT.