Belfer Center’s new fellows to focus on energy policy, Dubai Initiative

The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) has announced the following new 2008-09 research fellows. These fellows will conduct research within the Belfer Center’s Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research project and Dubai Initiative.

ETIP research project

Mohammed Al-Juaied, a visiting scholar with the ETIP project, is team leader for carbon management at Saudi Aramco’s Research & Development Center. He holds a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and an M.S. in petroleum engineering from the University of Texas, Austin, and an M.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Notre Dame. At the center, he is researching carbon capture and storage.

Melissa Chan is completing a Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University in the Engineering and Public Policy Department with a focus on the financial and environmental costs of mining coal in the United States. Her research includes a life-cycle analysis of the hydrogen energy infrastructure and analysis of policies to support carbon sequestration in the United States and abroad. She will conduct research under the center’s Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Project.

Jose Condor Tarco is completing a Ph.D. in petroleum systems engineering at the University of Regina in Canada. His dissertation addresses long-term stability for wellbores used in carbon dioxide sequestration. Tarco has researched carbon storage and enhanced oil recovery and has worked as a petroleum engineer for several oil companies. He is appointed under the center’s Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Project.

Charles Jones is an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston’s (UMass-Boston) Department of Management and Marketing, and is completing a Ph.D. at UMass-Boston on the renewable energy industry in Massachusetts. In addition to 10 years in the U.S. Navy as an engineer on nuclear submarines, Jones has worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on systems dynamics and on projects such as U.S. business strategies regarding climate change. He will conduct research under the center’s Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment Project.

Hengwei Liu is a postdoctoral fellow in thermal engineering at the Tsinghua-BP Clean Energy Research and Education Centre at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He conducts research on policy for advanced coal technology, including integrated gasification combined-cycle technology and carbon capture. At the Belfer Center, he will research advanced coal technology policy in China.

Ross Morrow is a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering. He most recently conducted a project on systems modeling of automotive market dynamics created by greenhouse gas policy initiatives, which was sponsored by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute. At the Belfer Center, he will research U.S. auto policy.

Bo Wang is a lecturer in international relations and deputy director of the Department of International Politics at the University of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in Beijing. He currently directs the North American section of a major research project on global energy policy centered at Renmin University in Beijing. At the Belfer Center, he will research climate change policy.

Xiaowei Xuan conducts research on energy and environmental policy in the Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, in the Development Research Center of the State Council, China. His dissertation from Peking University modeled the impacts of sulfur taxes on the Chinese economy. At the Belfer Center, he will research institutional dimensions of policy for advanced coal technology in China.

Yongzhen Yu is a visiting scholar with a joint appointment at the Belfer Center’s ETIP project and the Consortium for Energy Policy Research at Harvard, a university-wide collaboration headquartered at HKS. Yongzhen is an associate professor of economics and associate director of the macroeconomics division in the School of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. He is researching energy efficiency policy and coal technology policy in the United States and China.

Dubai Initiative

Mohamad Al-Ississ is a Ph.D. candidate in public policy at HKS. He has degrees from Harvard College and Harvard University in economics, Middle Eastern studies, and public administration in international development and experience as a management consultant who worked as a senior adviser to Jordanian ministers of industry and trade.

Justin Dargin led the ascension team for the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to incorporate Angola as the 12th member of the organization in 2006, and he advised senior officials on EU and U.S. law. He was a researcher at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where he pioneered the first major study of the Persian (Arabian) Gulf transnational gas grid, the Dolphin Project. He is currently writing a book on national oil companies in the global energy system.

Bryan Early is a Ph.D candidate in political science at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs, where he was the Dean Rusk Fellow of International Relations and worked as a research associate at the Center for International Trade and Security. He has authored numerous reports on nonproliferation export controls and strategic trade in the Middle East and Central Asia and published academic work on arms control and economic sanctions.

Stephen J. Ramos is a doctoral candidate at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design researching the impact of intensified trade flows, infrastructure, and technology on the physical form of cities. He has also taught at Harvard and worked with the Fundación Metrópoli in Madrid and the International Society of City and Regional Planners in Barcelona.

Michael D.H. Robbins is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Michigan. A recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship, Robbins, in his dissertation, examines the institutional and contextual factors that account for the success or failure of Islamist parties in the Arab world.

Jeannie Sowers is an assistant professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire. A former analyst for the Congressional Research Service, her current research focuses on the political economy of environmental change and institutional reform in the Arab world. She has conducted research in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and India.