Jessika E. Trancik is a Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Director of MIT's Sociotechnical Systems Research Center. Her research develops data-informed models and theories to explain the determinants of technological change and inform investments. She examines the dynamic costs, performance and environmental impacts of energy systems to inform climate policy and accelerate beneficial and equitable technology innovation. Her projects focus on all energy services, including electricity, transportation, heating and industrial processes. This work spans solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles and nuclear fission among other technologies. She received her B.S. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and was formerly at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and at WSP International/UNOPS (now Interpeace) in Geneva.
Her work has been published in journals, such as Nature, Nature Climate Change, Science, Energy Policy and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been featured by news outlets, such as the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and NPR.
