Marilyn Brown, an international leader in clean energy policy and Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor in Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, has been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE).
Brown was chosen for her work “bridging engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and policy studies to achieve cleaner electric energy,” according to the NAE.
She is one of 87 members, including three other Georgia Institute of Technology faculty members, elected in 2020. They join Georgia Institute of Technology colleagues such as Provost Rafael L. Bras and former presidents G. Wayne Clough and Joseph M. Pettit in being elected to the NAE.
“My election to the NAE reflects the growing recognition by engineers that translating technology advances into practical solutions to solve grand challenges requires an understanding of social, behavioral, and policy sciences,” Brown said. “Whether it’s social science or engineering science, the analytical rigor and underlying methodologies are often the same. As a result, there’s a mutual understanding of what constitutes strong, defensible, and important science.”
Energy Efficiency a Focus of Brown’s Research
Brown, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Lab, is known for her pioneering work developing economic-engineering models incorporating behavioral and social science principles into policy analysis of energy systems. Her influential research quantified the “energy-efficiency gap,” highlighting the importance of promoting cost-effective energy conservation improvements as a tool to improve energy security and reduce the impact of climate change.
Brown is the principal investigator on the Georgia Drawdown project with an $800,000 grant from the Ray C. Anderson Foundation to identity the most promising solutions to reduce Georgia’s carbon footprint.
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