Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Professor in Economics, the College, and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC). His other current positions and affiliations include Elected Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Editor of the Journal of Political Economy, Faculty Director of the E2e Project, Head of the JPAL Environment and Energy Program, co‐Director of the International Growth Centre’s Energy Research Programme, and Nonresident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution. Prior to rejoining the faculty at Chicago, Professor Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.
Trevor Houser is a partner with the Rhodium Group, an independent research company, and leads the firm’s Energy & Climate team. This interdisciplinary group of policy experts, economic analysts, energy modelers, data engineers and climate scientists analyzes the market impact of energy and climate policy and the economic risks of global climate change. During 2009, Trevor left Rhodium temporarily to serve as a senior advisor at the US State Department where he worked on international energy, natural resource and environmental policy issues. He serves on the finance committee of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership at the City College of New York, his alma mater. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on US-China Relations and serves on the Advisory Board of Center for US-China Relations at the Asia Society.
Robert Kopp is Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Director of the Megalopolitan Coastal Transformation Hub, and Co-Director of the University Office of Climate Action, Rutgers University. He also serves as co-director of Rutgers’ transdisciplinary Coastal Climate Risk & Resilience (C2R2) initiative, a training program which brings graduate students in the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, and urban planning together with coastal stakeholders to tackle the challenges that climate change poses to the world’s coastlines.
Prof. Kopp’s research focuses on understanding uncertainty in past and future climate change, with major emphases on sea-level change and on the interactions between physical climate change and the economy. He is a lead author of Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus (Columbia University Press, 2015) and of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s 2017 Climate Science Special Report, a member of the National Academies’ Committee on Assessing Approaches to Updating the Social Cost of Carbon, and a contributing author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Report. He has authored over sixty scientific papers and several popular articles in venues including the New York Times.
Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty in 2011, Prof. Kopp served as a AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow at the U.S. Department of Energy, where he worked on the U.S. government’s efforts to incorporate climate change into benefit-cost analysis and on the development and launch of the Clean Energy Ministerial. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow in geosciences and public policy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in geobiology from Caltech and his undergraduate degree in geophysical sciences from the University of Chicago. Prof. Kopp is a Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor’s Scholar and a past Leopold Leadership Fellow. He is a recipient of the American Geophysical Union’s James B. Macelwane and William Gilbert Medals and the International Union for Quaternary Research (INQUA)’s Sir Nicholas Shackleton Medal.
Emily specializes in ensuring that decision-makers understand their exposure to the impacts of climate change and have the information available to make sound decisions to effectively manage the associated risks and opportunities. She has more than 15 years of experience in catastrophe modeling and climate analytics. Previously, she spent 12 years at Risk Management Solutions (RMS), a leading catastrophe modeling firm, where she led initiatives focused on client consulting, strategic collaborative R&D, and product go-to-market. Emily also brings experience from Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), where her work concentrated on monitoring climate impacts and developing climate monitoring tools for use in developing countries, and she co-authored numerous peer-reviewed papers on climate science and climate applications. Emily holds a Bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences from the University of Michigan and a Master’s degree in Meteorology from Penn State University.
Faidat Brimah serves as the treasurer of the Climate Impact Lab and is the Director of Finance and Operations at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics, responsible for analyzing and monitoring comprehensive financial activities within the BFI and its affiliated centers, including expenditure tracking and assisting faculty and staff with review and negotiation of contracts and data use agreements. Faidat has worked in higher education for more than 5 years. Prior to joining BFI, Faidat held the position of Finance Associate in Urban Labs at the University of Chicago, supporting faculty and staff, in procurement, grant administration, and account management for all five Labs. Faidat holds a BS in Finance from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MBA from Roosevelt University.