Ernest J. Moniz is the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, director of the MIT Energy Initiative, and director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment at MIT, where he has served on the faculty since 1973.

Dr. Moniz served as under secretary of the Department of Energy from 1997 until January 2001 and, from 1995 to 1997, as associate director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President. At MIT, Dr. Moniz served as head of the Department of Physics and as director of the Bates Linear Accelerator Center.

His principal research contributions have been in theoretical nuclear physics and in energy technology and policy studies. He serves on President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) and is a member of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future.

Daniel G. Nocera is the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT, director of the Solar Revolutions Project and director of the Eni Solar Frontiers Center at MIT.

His group pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry. He has recently accomplished a solar fuels process that captures many of the elements of photosynthesis outside of the leaf. This discovery sets the stage for a storage mechanism for the large-scale distributed deployment of solar energy.

He has been awarded the Eni-Italgas Prize (2005), IAPS Award (2006), Burghausen Prize (2007), Harrison Howe Award (2008), ACS Inorganic Chemistry Award (2009) and the U.N. Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization’s Science and Technology Award (2009) for his contributions to the development of renewable energy. He has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. He was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World.”

Karen Polenske is director of the multiregional planning research staff, conducting studies on the economies of the United States, People’s Republic of China, and other developing countries, with a major focus on theoretical and empirical analyses of employment, energy, environmental, property-rights, public-infrastructure, restructuring and transportation issues.

Miklos Porkolab earned a BASc, University of British Columbia, 1963; PhD, Stanford University, 1967. His previous employment included Princeton University, Plasma Physics Laboratory — Research Staff (1967-1977); Astrophysical Sciences — lecturer with rank of professor (1975-1977).

At Princeton, Porkolab’s research concentrated on a quantitative understanding of the dispersive properties of plasma waves and instabilities in magnetized plasmas. This involved pioneering experimental measurements where the validity of the collisionless Boltzmann equation was verified, including nonlinear scattering of Bernstein waves with wavelengths comparable to the electron Larmor radius. This work included an experimental verification of nonlinear Landau damping, nonlinear resonant wave-wave scattering and of parametric instabilities, and a prediction of upper hybrid solitons.

In 1977, Porkolab joined the MIT Department of Physics and the newly established Plasma Fusion Center, where he began pioneering experiments on lower hybrid current drive in tokamak plasmas. Further work included clarifying the physics of ion cyclotron heating and mode conversion processes in multi-ion species fusion plasmas. Critical aspects of this work included measurements of mode converted ion Bernstein and ion cyclotron waves (ICW) using Phase Contrast Imaging (PCI). Recent work with PCI concentrated on measuring turbulence and Alfven wave phenomena in tokamak plasmas.

Honors: Fellow, APS (1976); Humboldt Prize (1976, US Senior Scientist); APS Excellence in Plasma Research Award, (1984); U.S Delegate, IUPAP, Comission 16, (1991-1997); Editor, Physics Letters A, (1991-2001); Chair, Division of Plasma Physics, APS, (1999); Chairman of Board, Fusion Power Associates, (2001-2006); Fellow, AAAS (2005); Karoly Simony Memorial Plaque and Prize, Hungarian Nuclear Society, 2007; James Clerk Maxwell Prize, American Physical Society, 2009.

Yuriy Roman-Leshkov’s group specializes in heterogeneous catalysis and materials design. Specific emphasis is placed on the application of catalytic materials to relevant problems associated with energy, biofuels, and renewable chemicals.

His group utilizes advanced inorganic, organic and organometallic synthetic techniques to endow solid materials with well-characterized surfaces where the physical and chemical properties of the solid are manipulated by controlling the structure of the material on all length scales. In particular, significant focus is placed on the molecular design and nanoscale engineering of microporous and mesoporous materials.

Roman-Leshkov completed his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, after which he completed his PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison — also in chemical engineering — under the guidance of Professor James Dumesic. Before joining the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, Roman-Leshkov completed a two-year postdoc at Caltech, working with Professor Mark E. Davis.

Richard Schmalensee is the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Economics and Management and director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. He served as the John C. Head III Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1998-2007. He was a member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1989-1991 and Deputy Dean of MIT Sloan from 1996-1998.

Schmalensee is the author or co-author of 11 books and more than 120 published articles, and he is co-editor of volumes I and II of the Handbook of Industrial Organization. His research has centered on industrial organization economics and its application to managerial and public policy issues, with particular emphasis on antitrust, regulatory and environmental policies. His recent work has focused on multisided platform businesses. Schmalensee is a member of the International Academy of Management and the National Commission on Energy Policy and a fellow of the Econometric Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served on several corporate boards and is currently a director of the International Data Group and chairman of the Editorial Board of Competition Policy International.