Valerie J Karplus

Associate Director, Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Professor, Engineering and Public Policy

Bio

Valerie J. Karplus is the Associate Director at the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and a Professor in the department of Engineering and Public Policy.

Karplus studies resource and environmental management in organizations operating in diverse national and industry contexts, with a focus on the role of institutions and management practices in explaining performance. Areas of expertise include regional approaches to low carbon transition, decarbonization of global corporate supply chains, and the integrated design and evaluation of energy, air quality, and climate policies. Karplus has taught courses on public policy analysis, global business strategy and organization, entrepreneurship, and the political economy of energy transitions. At CMU, she runs the Laboratory for Energy and Organizations at the CMU Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation.

Karplus is an affiliate of the Scott Energy Institute. She previously served on the faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management. From 2011-2016, she directed the MIT-Tsinghua China Energy and Climate Project.

Education

Karplus holds a BS in biochemistry and political science from Yale University and a PhD in engineering systems from MIT.

Research

Research includes 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. Areas of expertise include China’s energy system, including technology and business model innovation, energy system governance, and the management of air pollution and climate change.

Projects

She has previously worked in the development policy section of the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany, as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, and in the biotechnology industry in Beijing, China, as a Luce Scholar. 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 is 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.