CMU's Ines Lima Azevedo Will Lead New Center to Develop Strategies Improving Climate and Energy Decision Making

Researchers To Assist Public and Private Organizations With Complex Energy and Climate Issues

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Dec 06, 2010, 04:48 ET

PITTSBURGH, Dec. 6, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Uncertainty is a part of life. But a new center at Carnegie Mellon University will help consumers and industry better handle those doubts when it comes to issues involving global climate change and energy.

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The Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making (http://cedm.epp.cmu.edu/index.php), funded by a five-year, $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation, will develop and implement strategies for protecting everything from fragile marine ecosystems to curbing dangerous carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation.

"We plan to develop new, innovative insights and methods to assist key stakeholders as they address important decisions involving climate change and the ongoing transformation of the world's critical energy systems," said Ines Lima Azevedo, the center's executive director and an assistant research professor in the university's Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP). "At the same time, we'll also be developing new theories and methods for supporting decision making under uncertainty."

The new center also will tap the expertise of principal investigator M. Granger Morgan, head of CMU's EPP Department, and several other Carnegie Mellon faculty as well as researchers from the following institutions: Duke University, Oxford, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, Woods Hole Institute, Penn State, the Vermont Law School, George Mason University and the Rand Corp in both Pittsburgh and Santa Monica, Calif.

"This new center will help educate graduate students interested in developing careers spanning the issues and areas of climate change, the environment and energy," said Morgan, who has spent more than a decade developing methods to describe scientific uncertainty and incorporate it into public policy decision-making.

Other plans for outreach include the development of a Teacher Professional Development Program for high school teachers, dubbed "Climate Science, Impacts and Decision Making."

About Carnegie Mellon University: Carnegie Mellon (www.cmu.edu) is a private, internationally ranked research university with programs in areas ranging from science, technology and business, to public policy, the humanities and the arts. More than 11,000 students in the university's seven schools and colleges benefit from a small student-to-faculty ratio and an education characterized by its focus on creating and implementing solutions for real problems, interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation. A global university, Carnegie Mellon's main campus in the United States is in Pittsburgh, Pa. It has campuses in California's Silicon Valley and Qatar, and programs in Asia, Australia, Europe and Mexico. The university is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign, titled "Inspire Innovation: The Campaign for Carnegie Mellon University," which aims to build its endowment, support faculty, students and innovative research, and enhance the physical campus with equipment and facility improvements.