Two new fellows—Anthony Liu and Zhongmin Wang—will join RFF in the fall. Anthony Liu, who is receiving a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, San Diego, will divide his time in the coming year between serving as a fellow at RFF and completing a research fellowship on environmental issues in China. Liu also has worked at the Shanghai Academy of Development, the Brookings Institution, Charles River Associates, and RedWhale Software Corporation. Zhongmin Wang is an assistant professor of economics at Northeastern University who focuses on industrial organization, applied microeconomics, energy and regulatory economics, and information economics. He received a Ph.D. in economics from Georgetown University and previously served as an assistant professor at Monash University in Australia.
Former RFF Senior Fellow William Pizer, a faculty fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and an associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy, returned to RFF as a university fellow. From 2008 to 2011, Pizer was deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy in the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
RFF appointed a new cohort of research leaders for 2012. Senior Fellows Karen Palmer and Margaret Walls are serving as research directors, and Fellow Juha Siikamäki is serving as associate research director. The research directors act as internal advocates for the research staff, providing immediate points of contact for day-to-day issues. They also participate in hiring, performance reviews, mentoring, and project management. As associate research director, Siikamäki will provide leadership for the RFF research assistants and help manage IT from a research perspective. Senior Fellow Roberton Williams is continuing in his role as director of academic programs, managing RFF’s academic awards, university fellows, and First Wednesday Seminar Series.
RFF Senior Fellow Virginia McConnell is serving on two committees of the National Research Council Board on Energy and Environmental Systems: the Committee on Transitions to Alternative Vehicles and Fuels and the Committee on Fuel Economy of Light Duty Vehicles, Phase 2.
RFF Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow Molly Macauley was appointed to the External Advisory Board of the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC), which was created through a partnership between the University of Maryland and RFF and funded by the National Science Foundation. RFF University Fellows Simon Levin of Princeton and Thomas Sterner of the University of Gothenberg also are serving on the board. Senior Fellow and Co-Director of RFF’s Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth Jim Boyd is SESYNC’s director of social science and policy.
RFF Chauncey Starr Senior Fellow Roger Cooke and RFF Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Climate and Electricity Policy Raymond Kopp participated in an authors’ meeting in New Zealand for the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Alan Krupnick, senior fellow and director of RFF’s Center for Energy Economics and Policy, was elected president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE). He will serve a one-year term as president-elect in 2012, a two-year term as president from 2013 through 2014, and a final year as past-president. RFF Fellow Juha Siikamäki will continue his role as treasurer of AERE. RFF Fellow Sheila Olmstead will participate this year as a new member of the board of directors, and RFF’s Marilyn Voigt will continue as executive director. RFF Research Director and Thomas J. Klutznick Senior Fellow Margaret Walls is serving on the American Farmland Trust’s Research Advisory Council.
RFF Visiting Scholar and Co-Director of the Center for the Management of Ecological Wealth Lynn Scarlett is on the National Research Council Committee on Sustainability Linkages in the Federal Government. She is also the co–lead author of a chapter on decision support for the 2013 National Climate Assessment of the United States Global Change Research Program.
