Carnegie Mellon University
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Jared L. Cohon

Jared L. Cohon

University Professor, Engineering and Public Policy
President Emeritus, Carnegie Mellon University

Address
Department of Engineering and Public Policy
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Bio

  • Carnegie Mellon 1997-

Professor Cohon served as the President of Carnegie Mellon from 1997 until 2013. Before that he was Dean of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale (1992-1997) and on the faculty and in the administration at Johns Hopkins (1973-1992). He serves on the boards of several foundations and non-profit organizations. Among his extensive service for the U.S. government and the National Academies, he chaired the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (1997 2002), co-chaired the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Laboratories (2015-2016), and chaired the National Academies’ Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (2016-2022).

Education

  • Ph.D. (Civil Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1973.
  • M.S. (Civil Engineering), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1972.
  • B.S. (Civil Engineering), University of Pennsylvania, 1969.

Research

Professor Cohon is interested in environmental systems analysis, especially the development and application of optimization tools for large-scale natural resource and environmental problems. Most of his theoretical work has focused on algorithms for multi-objective programming problems and systems methods for integrating engineering, economics and policy in public environmental decision making. He has worked most on water resource, energy and waste problems.

Publications

  1. Cohon, J.L. 1978. Multiobjective Programming and Planning. Mathematics in Science and Engineering Series. Academic Press, New York.  (Republished in 2003 by Dover Publications).
  2. Mayfield, E.N., J.L. Cohon, N.Z. Muller, I.L. Azevedo, and A.L. Robinson. 2019. “Quantifying the social equity state of an energy system: Environmental and labor market equity of the shale gas boom in Appalachia.”  Environmental Research Letters, 14, 124072.  
  3. Mayfield, E.N., J.L. Cohon, N.Z. Muller, I.L. Azevedo, and A.L. Robinson. 2019. “Cumulative environmental and employment impacts of the shale gas boom.” Nature Sustainability, 2, 1122–1131.
  4. Schwetschenau, S. E., J. M. VanBriesen, and J. L. Cohon. 2019. “Integrated Multiobjective Optimization and Simulation Model Applied to Drinking Water Treatment Placement in the Context of Existing Infrastructure.” Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 145 (11): 04019048. 
  5. Maghfirra, D., J.L. Cohon, P. Jaramillo, and M.G. Morgan. 2021. “Optimizing an equitable micro-hydropower deployment: Application of a multi-objective method for rural Indonesia.”  Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis 2021; 1-12.

Research Interests

Environmental systems analysis; development and application of optimization tools for large-scale natural resource and environmental problems; algorithms for multi-objective programming problems.