Costa Samaras (E 2008)

Director, Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Courtesy Appointment, Engineering and Public Policy

Bio

Constantine (Costa) Samaras is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and affiliated faculty in the Energy Science, Technology and Policy Program at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the pathways to clean, climate-safe, equitable, and secure energy and infrastructure systems.

Samaras analyzes how technologies and policies affect energy use and national security, resilience to climate change impacts, economic and equity outcomes, and life cycle environmental emissions and other externalities. He directs the Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation and is the Director of the Power Sector Carbon Index. He is a fellow in Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and by courtesy, a faculty member in both the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and CMU’s H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy.

Samaras served on three National Academies Committee evaluating emerging energy technologies and earth systems research, served as the chair of the ASCE Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, and served on the Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Committee and currently serves on the Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board.

Samaras has published numerous studies examining electric and automated vehicles, renewable electricity, clean energy transitions and decarbonization policy, and climate resilience. He was a contributor to the 4th National Climate Assessment, and was one of the lead author contributors to the Global Energy Assessment. He has also led analyses on energy security, strategic basing, and infrastructure issues faced by the Department of Defense. He teaches courses on energy utilization and demand, climate change resilience, and infrastructure and environment interconnections in a changing world. In 2018, he was named Professor of the Year by the Pittsburgh Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Samaras regularly provides commentary to online, print, radio, and television media, and his comments have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Atlantic, PBS, ABC News, WIRED, and other outlets. He has presented his research to senior appointed governmental leaders, former cabinet secretaries, senior federal and military decisionmakers, Congress Members and professional staff, and the leadership of major utilities, automotive companies, and technology firms.

From 2009 to 2014 he was a RAND Corporation researcher, most recently as a Senior Engineer and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School, and was an adjunct senior researcher through 2021. From 2008 to 2009 he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Climate Decisionmaking Center at Carnegie Mellon, working on electric transportation and low-carbon technology policy. From 1999 to 2004 he was an engineer working on several multibillion-dollar infrastructure megaprojects in New York, including the extension of the Number 7 subway line in Manhattan, and also worked on the rebuilding of the subway line underneath the World Trade Center after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Costa received a joint Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon, an MPA in public policy from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and a B.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University.