News
In a social and political age characterized by oversimplification of important issues, and frequent lack of respect for expert opinion, effective communication has become the holy grail of scientific discourse.
Research from EPP Ph.D student DeVynne Farquharson and Professors Paulina Jaramillo and Constantine Samaras examines how the unreliable delivery of electricity can lead to additional consumer costs, limited economic benefits, and increased environmental impacts.
January 8, 2021
Peter Adams appointed as Thomas Lord Professor of Engineering
Peter Adams, Head and Professor of Engineering and Public Policy and Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, has been appointed as a Thomas Lord Professor of Engineering. This professorship was endowed to honor an educator whose work has had a profound impact on the university, his or her academic field and society.
January 6, 2021
EPP Faculty Seminar Series
EPP Faculty Seminars are monthly presentations by EPP faculty members, many of whom have joint appointments in other departments. The talks are non-technical, but technically informed. They cover active research programs and emerging policy issues.
December 21, 2020
Baruch Fischhoff and COVID-19
As COVID-19 continues to spread, EPP professor Baruch Fischhoff — a leading expert in the fields of science communication and risk-analysis — has spoken to many media outlets about the virus and its fallout. Here is some of his latest work.
June 11, 2020
Peter Adams Named Head of Carnegie Mellon's Engineering and Public Policy Department
Peter Adams, a Carnegie Mellon University professor and leading researcher in the field of air quality and environmental policy, has been named head of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP) at CMU. Adams, who currently serves as interim head of EPP, will immediately transition to department head.
March 30, 2020
Q&A with Kathleen Carley on the spread of coronavirus disinformation
Amid the global coronavirus pandemic, disinformation about the situation has been spreading at lightning speeds on social media. EPP's Kathleen Carley sits down with CyLab to answer questions regarding coronavirus news and how not to fall for disinformation.
March 24, 2020
Baruch Fischhoff speaks with the LA Times about COVID-19 news
EPP's Baruch Fischhoff spoke with the LA Times to discuss why you should stop obsessing about coronavirus news, and how to do it. Fischhoff, a noted psychologist and decision-scientist, recommends choosing three print media sources and one local public health agency to follow. Then check in on their coronavirus coverage once a day.
February 26, 2020
EPP studies greenhouse gas emissions from Pittsburgh’s food system
A first-of-its-kind study by a team of 19 Carnegie Mellon University students, led by Ed Rubin and John Miller, has estimated the carbon footprint of the entire food system of Allegheny County. Their study tabulates the emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs)—mainly carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—associated with the sum of activities required to get food from farm to table.
October 4, 2019
Two EPP undergrads named College of Engineering ACS Scholars
Frank Andujar Lugo, undergraduate in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy, and Taylor Brown, undergraduate in the departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy, were two of the 10 selected recipients of this year’s College of Engineering ACS Scholars program.
September 24, 2019
Destenie Nock, ‘engineer for social good,’ joins EPP faculty
Destenie Nock has joined the departments of Engineering & Public Policy (EPP) and Civil & Environmental Engineering (CEE) this fall. She will begin as a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow in EPP with an adjunct-faculty appointment to CEE, before starting as a tenure-track assistant professor in both EPP and CEE in the 2020 academic year.
September 19, 2019
Whitefoot selected to attend Frontiers of Engineering symposium for emerging engineers
Kate Whitefoot, an Assistant Professor in the departments of Engineering and Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering, has been selected as one of the nation’s brightest emerging engineering leaders to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 2019 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium in North Charleston, South Carolina, Sept. 25-27.
September 16, 2019
Davis featured on CIT's "Make it Real" podcast
With more technology, devices, and sensors it seems like we are overrun with data so much so that researchers are looking to machines and artificial intelligence to be able to sort through it all. On this episode of “Make it Real,” host Alexandra George sits down with Engineering and Public Policy professor Alex Davis to discuss this overload of data.
September 9, 2019
PhD Student Peter Tschofen speaks at Austrian Ministry
On Friday, June 14, 2019 Engineering and Public Policy PhD student and CEDM affiliate, Peter Tschofen, spoke at the Austrian Federal Ministry for Sustainability and Tourism (BMNT), which is responsible for, “key quality-of-life issues and for questions which are essential in creating a livable future for our children.”
August 13, 2019
SUCCEED 2019
The Center for Climate and Environmental Decision Making (CEDM) held the annual SUCCEED conference from July 8-12, connecting high school students with EPP PhDs through a variety of experiments, activities, and field trips.
July 31, 2019
Rubin Speaks at Spain's World Sustainable Urban Food Centre Launch
On July 22, Edward S. Rubin, Alumni Chair Professor of Environmental Engineering in the Departments of Engineering and Public Policy and Mechanical Engineering, spoke about the links between climate change and urban food systems at a high-profile event in Valencia, Spain.
February 11, 2019
Hills elected senior member of national academy of inventors
EPP Distinguished Service Professor Alex Hills has been elected Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. The recognition honors his work as a wireless innovator, his 19 related patents, and their commercialization.
January 14, 2019
Lorrie Faith Cranor named new director of Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab
As Director, Lorrie Cranor will be assuming the chair as the Bosch Distinguished Professor in Security and Privacy Technologies. CyLab, founded in 2003, brings together security and privacy experts from all schools across Carnegie Mellon with the vision of creating a world in which technology can be trusted.
September 26, 2018
Pittsburgh speakers rally against Trump plan to weaken fuel standards
Jeremy Michalek testified in front of the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in downtown Pittsburgh on the proposal to roll back future vehicle emission standards.
September 26, 2018
EPP at USAEE 2018
The department had a large cohort of attendees and some big wins at the annual United States Association for Energy Economics conference.
September 14, 2018
Daniel Armanios recognized by US Army
The US Department of the Army, as nominated by EPP PhD graduate Jaison Desai, Army Major, awards advisor Daniel Armanios with Army Colonel Certificate of Appreciation for Patriotic Civilian Service.
August 24, 2018
Research into freight decarbonization featured in Axios' Generate newsletter
Research by Lynn Kaack, Parth Vanishav, and Granger Morgan, was summarized in this weekly newsletter, in which Axios concludes that heavy freight decarbonization requires “greater efficiency, electrification, lower-CO2 fuels, changes in supply chain management and more.
August 3, 2018
Rubin keynotes Interdisciplinary Sustainable Architecture LAB
Professor Ed Rubin gave the keynote presentation at the Interdisciplinary Sustainable Architecture LAB Workshop. The conference, hosted by the Polytechnic University of Valencia in Valencia, Spain, brought together an international audience of graduate students and faculty from six universities in Europe and North America and focused on the sustainable design of urban areas.
July 29, 2018
Pittsburgh: Think twice about allowing more rail traffic to roll through the city
Professors Karen Clay, Nicholas Muller, and Akshaya Jha (Heinz College), along with the Univerity of Pittsburgh's Randall Walsh, wrote an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette cautioning the city of Pittsburgh on the public health costs from locomotive emissions.
July 13, 2018
SUCCEED 2018
The Center for Climate and Energy Devision Making held its annual program for high school students and teachers the week of July 9. SUCCEED connects high school students with EPP PhD students who share information about energy and the environment.
July 2, 2018
The vanishing nuclear industry
Could nuclear power make a significant contribution to decarbonizing the U.S. energy system over the next three or four decades? That is the question asked by four current and former researchers from EPP. Their answer: probably not.
June 24, 2018
Passing legislation to collect maternal death information
Professors Tamar Krishnamurti and Alex Davis promote tracking preventable causes of death in this op-ed in The Hill.
June 15, 2018
Is more certification always a good thing?
Along with University of Oregon Lundquist School of Management Assistant Professor Lauren Lanahan, assistant professor Daniel Armanios looked at a representative six-state region of the country and studied Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding recipients from 2001 to 2010, and their outcomes.
May 14, 2018
Muller recognized as Lester and Judith Lave Professor of Economics, Engineering and Public Policy
Nicholas Muller was recognized as the Lester and Judith Lave Associate Professor of Economics, Engineering and Public Policy, an appointment both in the Tepper School of Business and in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. The chair was designated for a faculty member with an undergraduate background in the sciences and a doctoral degree in economics; Muller is the first to be awarded this professorship.
April 27, 2018
Baruch Fischhoff named 2018 Andrew Carnegie Fellow
Professor Baruch Fischhoff has won a 2018 Carnegie Corporation of New York Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. Fischhoff is one of 31 scholars and writers who will receive $200,000 to devote significant time to research, write and publish in the humanities and social sciences.
April 27, 2018
Batteries have a dirty little secret
Modeling energy mixes and energy prices across the country, Rochester Institute of Technology’s Eric Hittinger (PhD '12) and professor Inês Azevedo determine that the deployment of energy storage increases emissions almost everywhere in the US today.
April 26, 2018
Framework assesses, optimizes economic value of Lithium-Ion batteries
In research published in Nature Energy, professor Jay Whitacre and EPP PhD candidate Guannan He present two metrics for battery operating and planning decisions: the marginal benefit of usage and the average benefit of usage. The marginal benefit of usage brings long-term information to short-term decisions and is proved in the paper to allow for the maximization of the life-cycle benefit when short-term decisions are made.
April 25, 2018
Carley Honored with USGIF Academic Achievement Award
The USGIF, which seeks to advance the geospatial intelligence tradecraft as it relates to national security, cited Kathleen Carley's development of Dynamic Network Analysis (DNA) theory, her work on social network analysis techniques and her development of the geospatial dynamic social network analysis and visualization tool, ORA, as watershed contributions to the field.
April 24, 2018
US Senate science advisor talks geoengineering from high in the sky
Shuchio Talati (PhD '16) discusses sunlight-blocking aerosols, ocean seeding, rogue geoengineers - and a misunderstood field.
April 18, 2018
Scott Institute Seed Grants help To fuel energy research
EPP professor Scott Matthews has received a Seed Grant from the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation to evaluate how climate change will affect running water as a renewable energy source based on scenario planning.
April 13, 2018
Jaramillo named lead author on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report
Paulina Jaramillo will be a lead author for Chapter 10 of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Climate Assessment Report report, which will focus on Transportation.
April 4, 2018
US Power Sector Carbon Intensity drops below 1,000 lb/MWh for lowest emissions intensity on record
This release marks the one-year anniversary of the Index, developed by Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems and Carnegie Mellon University as a new metric to track power sector carbon emissions performance trends.
February 23, 2018
Do we even need the clean power plan?
Though the US has withdrawn from the Paris Climate Agreement, researchers have found that the U.S. can still meet - or maybe even beat - its emissions reduction targets without the Clean Power Plan. Public radio program The Allegheny Front recently sat down with professor Paul Fischbeck to learn more.
February 16, 2018
Even without the clean power plan, US can achieve Paris Agreement emissions reductions
EPP Researchers have calculated that the U.S. can meet—or even beat—the near-term carbon dioxide emission reductions required by the United Nations Paris Agreement, despite the Trump Administration’s withdrawal of the Clean Power Plan.
February 7, 2018
What Do Students Think of a Wikipedia Assignment in the Classroom?
Last year, professor Deborah Stine taught two public courses using Wikipedia. She explains, "This teaching method intrigued me as a way for my students to better understand the opportunities and challenges of Wikipedia in its use as an information resource for policymakers and the public, and as a way for them to learn how to assess the quality of and critique the work of others — a critical part of any policy analysis."
January 8, 2018
Science and Research Policy at the End of Moore’s Law
EPP researchers Nyla Khan, David Hounshell, and Erica Fuchs argue in Nature Electronics that the challenges facing the semiconductor industry are unprecedented: today’s industry and market structure undermine incentives for continued collective action in research and development, potentially threatening world-wide economic growth.