MAP/Ming Visiting Professors

2006-07 The MAP/Ming Committee on Energy and the Environment is proud to present Mr. Amory B. Lovins as the 5th MAP/Ming Visiting Professor for Energy and the Environment. Mr. Lovins is the Chairman and Chief Scientist at the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit and non-partisan “think and do tank.” For over 30 years, he has been a prominent advocate for the Soft Energy Path and has been active in energy, resource, environmental, and security policy worldwide, and has briefed 18 heads of state. He has authored or co-authored numerous papers and 29 books—the most recent, Winning the Oil Endgame, is a study commissioned by the Department of Defense that details a plan for the US to phase-out oil, create jobs, revitalize key industries and rural America, and enhance national security. Among Mr. Lovins’ numerous awards and distinctions are the “Alternative Nobel;” Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes; the Happold Medal; the Heinz, Lindbergh, TIME Hero for the Planet, and World Technology Awards; and a MacArthur Fellowship.

2005-06 Paul Komor, Ph.D., is a Lecturer at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Senior Advisor at E Source, an energy information firm in Boulder, Colorado. Paul currently teaches in the Environmental Studies Program and in the School of Engineering at CU-Boulder, and launched a new graduate program in energy policy in Fall 2003. At E Source, Paul advises utility clients on energy efficiency and renewable energy. Prior to joining the University of Colorado faculty and E Source, Paul was a Project Director at the U.S. Congress' Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), where he worked with both House and Senate Congressional Committees in preparing and evaluating energy legislation. Prior to joining OTA, he taught at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Paul holds a B.S. from Cornell University, and a M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford University.

2004-05 Dr. Ashok Gadgil, has a doctorate in Physics from University of California, Berkeley.   He is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.    He has substantial experience in technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation -- particularly in developing countries.   For example, the utility-sponsored compact fluorescent lamp leasing programs that he has pioneered are being successfully implemented by utilities in several east-European and developing countries.   When scaled up, as currently planned by these utilities, these programs will delay the construction of several thousand megawatts of electric generation capacity with their associated adverse environmental impacts.   He has several patents and inventions to his credit, among them the "UVWaterworks," a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in the developing countries, for which he received the Discover Award in 1996 for the most significant environmental invention of the year, as well as the Popular Science award for "Best of What is New - 1996".

2003-04 Dr. Jonathan Koomey, holds M.S. and PhD degrees from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley, and a B.A. in History of Science from Harvard University. He is the author or coauthor of seven books and more than one hundred and thirty articles and reports on energy conservation technology, energy economics, energy policy, environmental externalities, and global climate change. Dr. Koomey serves on the Editorial Board of the journal Contemporary Economic Policy, and has appeared on Nova/Frontline, BBC radio, CNBC, All Things Considered, Marketplace, Tech Nation, The California Report, CNET radio, and KQED radio. He has been quoted in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, The Washington Post, Science, Science News, American Scientist, Dow Jones News Wires, USA Today, SF Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, Interactive Week, Business 2.0, Salon.com, and Network Magazine. He is also a Research Affiliate of the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley.

2003-04 Dr. Joel Swisher, has been working in private consulting practice, serving the electric utility industry, multilateral financial institutions and private corporations. He has helped develop carbon-offset projects using renewable energy and energy efficiency technology, and he has written baseline studies and monitoring plans for offset buyers such as the World Bank Prototype Carbon Fund. Dr. Swisher has evaluated electric power markets for Brazilian utilities, numerous energy-efficiency programs for utilities in North America, greenhouse-gas trading programs for European governments, and carbon emission reduction options for several multilateral banks. One technical specialty is using area-specific utility cost analysis to identify cost-effective opportunities for distributed power generation and targeted load management. This work also involves analyzing institutional and financial barriers to implementing energy efficiency projects, as well as designing incentive programs to overcome these barriers. These methods have been applied to energy-efficiency technologies, co-generation, solar photovoltaics and fuel cells in markets as diverse as California, Ontario, South Africa, Brazil and the Philippines.

Dr. Swisher is a Registered Professional Engineer and earned three degrees from Stanford: a BS '78 in Civil Engineering, MS '80 in Mechanical Engineering, and PhD '91 in Energy and Environmental Engineering.  His PhD dissertation introduced several key concepts in the technical analysis of carbon offsets, based on fieldwork in Central America evaluating energy, conservation and reforestation options. He is author of over 100 professional publications, including several energy-efficiency handbooks, which he prepared for the Electric Power Research Institute. Also, Dr. Swisher is co-author of a bilingual (English and Portuguese) textbook on energy efficiency program design and evaluation and integrated energy resource planning.