Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
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Mauzerall, Denise
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Professor Mauzerall’s research examines linkages between air pollution origin, transport and impacts, including impacts on human health, food security and climate change. She explores potential co-benefits of reductions in air pollutants (e.g., black carbon) for climate change and public health and the benefits of reduction in greenhouse gases (e.g., methane) on air quality, health and agricultural yields.
Recent research has assessed the climatic benefit of black carbon mitigation and the transport of black carbon to the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau; evaluated the global reductions in crop production due to present and potential future ozone exposure as well as the benefits of methane mitigation and careful cultivar selection in reducing future agricultural crop losses due to ozone exposure; evaluated inter-continental transport of fine aerosols and their impact on public health; and estimated the impact of present and potential future emissions of aerosols from China on global air quality, premature mortality and radiative forcing.
Current research is examining the impact of past and future climate change on air pollutant surface concentrations and the associated impacts on global premature mortality; evaluating the feasibility of including nitrous oxide, which is both an ozone depleting and greenhouse gas, in the successful Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer international treaty; evaluating the source-receptor relationships of black carbon emissions from around the world; and examining the benefits to air quality in China of increased penetration of wind power.
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Peng, Wei (‘14 - ‘16)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Wei is broadly interested in the interactions of policies for renewable energy, air pollution and climate in country-specific political environment. Her dissertation focuses on designing China’s wind energy strategy to maximize environmental benefits, and the domestic policy conditions to enable such strategy. She conducts integrated assessments to quantify air quality and climate benefits for various near-term and mid-term wind development pathways in China, based on which she further analyzes the capacity of existing policy to enable such wind energy strategy in China’s current electricity market featured by the dominance of state-owned enterprises and complex central-local relations. She is especially interested in how to facilitate inter-provincial renewable electricity transport to help renewable integration and maximize displaced emissions.
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Craft, Amy
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Dr. Craft is an economist specializing in energy regulation and policy. Before coming to Princeton, Dr. Craft worked in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice analyzing mergers and acquisitions in the electricity sector. While at Princeton, she has taught courses on several topics, including energy economics, environmental economics and risk analysis.
Her research interests broadly lie in the area of energy market structure and regulation, particularly in the electricity sector. Given the complexities and environmental consequences associated with both the demand and supply side of energy, there is room for regulation to improve market efficiency.
Unfortunately, many economic policies, such as a tax on greenhouse gases, are not politically feasible. Dr. Craft is interested in evaluating the efficiency of other policies. In particular, she is interested in looking at the incentives they create for technological change in how we produce and consume energy.
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Brunnermeier, Smita
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Dr. Smita Brunnermeier is an environmental economist who builds micro-econometric models to analyze the policy causes and consequences of interactions between human or corporate behavior and environmental services. She has researched the social welfare impacts of regulating hazardous air and water pollutants, the effects of regulation on industry location decisions (pollution haven’s hypothesis and carbon leakage), the drivers of pollution reduction and energy efficiency technologies, the links between corporate environmental and financial performance, and land use dynamics in urban environments. She is also keenly interested in issues at the intersection of economic development and environmental protection. She earned a PhD in Economics from Vanderbilt University in 1998 and has been a lecturer in Economics at Princeton since 1999. She has taught courses on environmental and natural resource economics, sustainable development and microeconomics, and advised over a hundred junior independent papers and senior theses on environmental topics at Princeton.
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Buchanan, Maya (‘15 - ‘17)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Maya Buchanan is a PhD student in climate impacts and adaptation policy at Princeton, examining coastal adaptation for urban areas in the face of sea level rise and non-stationary flood impacts. Her objective is to improve decision-makers’ ability to plan for the future by understanding expected damages resulting from different adaptation responses to coastal threats, despite imprecise and variable parameterization of coupled natural and human systems. Her research focuses on modeling these systems to better understand limits to adaptation and optimal adaptation pathways. Maya studied economics and environmental science and policy as an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis, and environmental engineering (water resources and systems optimization) as a master’s student at Johns Hopkins. Before starting her PhD, Maya was a liaison for the White House Subcommittee of Global Change Research and collaborator on a federal-private-academic partnership to model the risks of weather and climate extremes with the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Previously, she worked as an Earth science, energy, and water policy analyst respectively for NASA, the Department of Energy, the Architect of the Capital, and UNESCO’s Science Branch.
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Baker, Rachel (‘15 - ‘17)
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Rachel’s research combines climate and socioeconomic data to investigate how climate affects livelihoods in developing countries. In particular she is interested in how climactic variations affect employment and migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research hopes to inform predictions regarding the future impact of climate change in this region. Rachel has an undergraduate degree in physics and a master’s in applied mathematics from Cambridge University.
