Scott Institute Director’s Letter

Dear Friends of the Scott Institute:

As 2023 draws to a close, we truly appreciate your many contributions to the work and impact of the Scott Institute over the past year. In this director’s letter, we provide a snapshot of this year’s work and our aspirations for the coming year. 

First, we are truly excited to announce the Scott Institute’s new Grand Challenge Partnerships. This work involves forming strategic partnerships with organizations eager to work alongside CMU researchers to accelerate the transition to a sustainable and resilient energy system. Our first partnership, with CMU alumni Yeming and Aaron Rankin, involves a five-year, $1.5 million commitment to the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department to expand research on climate change adaptation and energy systems. Each Grand Challenge is crafted to address a frontier, multi-disciplinary question in energy, from addressing fundamental natural and social science to the development of technology and infrastructure to the roles of policy, workforce, and community engagement in the transition. In the coming years, we are excited to develop more Grand Challenge partnerships in strategic growth areas for university energy research, in partnership with the faculty, departments, schools, and alumni community at CMU.

Second, over the past year, we have deepened the Institute’s focus on energy transitions in industry. The industrial sector is often considered one of the hardest parts of the economy to abate greenhouse gas emissions, in part due to the challenge of replacing fossil fuels as a source of heat for industrial processes. Our flagship conference during Energy Week focused squarely on the many dimensions of this challenge, considering technology and infrastructure needs, policy enablers, and ways to engage workers and communities. We followed this exciting series of events with a Workshop on Accelerating Green Steel in October. Focusing on an industry that represents 7-9% of global GHG emissions, the workshop drew participation from companies representing six continents and 25% of total global steel production, along with associations and academic researchers working in this area. We encourage you to read the rapporteurs report, which describes the broad range of pledges and actions to decarbonize industry that workshop participants are pursuing, as well as barriers encountered and strategies to overcome them. 

Third, our leadership transition is nearly complete. As the executive director and new associate director, we have been building on a strong foundation left by former director Jay Whitacre to strengthen energy research across the campus and realize its impact regionally and around the world. We are truly excited to welcome back from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy our new director and Civil and Environmental Engineering professor Costa Samaras. Costa’s work in the White House as Principal Assistant Director for Energy and OSTP Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition has been transformational for the U.S. energy systems and decarbonization efforts. Together, we look forward to advancing the Scott Institute’s mission to address the world’s most pressing energy challenges by enabling collaborative research, strategic partnerships, policy outreach, entrepreneurship, and education.

Beyond these highlights, the Scott Institute continues to support cutting-edge energy research by faculty, staff, and students through our seed fund program led by Andy Gellman and draw large crowds to our Distinguished Lectures, which brought together, educated and inspired the CMU community with unique perspectives on some of the world’s toughest energy challenges. In 2024, by bringing the strengths of our faculty, staff, and students together, especially in our Grand Challenge Partnerships, we look forward to growing a broader set of activities focused on enabling the deep decarbonization of organizations and systems, at the scales of the region to the nation to the world. 

We are excited to have you join us on this journey, and we will keep you posted! Thank you for your ongoing support and many contributions to the Scott Institute’s community and impact. We wish you and yours a wonderful and restorative holiday season.

Best regards,

Valerie Karplus, Acting Director and Associate Director

Daniel Tkacik, Executive Director

December 2023