Frank Wolak, an expert in energy and environmental economics, named director of FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD)
FSI's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) is pleased to announce the selection of a new director, Frank Wolak, who is Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in the Department of Economics and FSI Senior Fellow. Professor Wolak brings to the post a distinguished record of scholarship and deep policy experience in energy and environmental economics and regulation.
Wolak’s wide-ranging research contributions have examined energy systems both domestically and in emerging markets around the world. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for the electricity supply industry in California and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), among other professional affiliations.
PESD founder David G. Victor, Professor of Law and FSI Senior Fellow, stepped down from the director position effective April 1, 2009. PESD Assistant Director Mark C. Thurber will take over as acting director until Wolak assumes the director position on September 1, 2009.
Victor will remain at Stanford as faculty through the end of the summer of 2009, when he will leave to become a full professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at U.C. San Diego, where he will build a research group working on the study of international regulation.
“FSI and Stanford are extremely grateful to David Victor for all that he has done to establish PESD and build it into the innovative and influential research program that it is today,” said FSI Director Coit D. Blacker, the Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies. “I know that the entire Stanford community joins me in extending our best wishes to David and in offering a hearty welcome to Frank.”
In a world facing profound transformations in the way energy is generated and used, PESD’s work on how political, economic, and institutional factors combine to shape energy market outcomes meets a critical global research need. For additional information on PESD research interests and platforms, please contact Acting Director Mark Thurber.