SOHEIL SHAYEGH PhD 

I am a scientist at the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment (EIEE) in Milano, Italy. I work with an international group of experts in the fields of climate change economic modeling and policy. My main research focus was on mathematical modeling of the interaction between natural and human systems. In particular, I have been investigating climate change and its impact on human societies. This has led me to several directions within the field of climate change policy.

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First, I am interested in exploring decision making under uncertainty and how to design a robust policy for dealing with unknowns in climate and economic systems. I have developed a novel approximation algorithm for finding optimal strategies when we are facing stochasticity and uncertainty in the system.

Second, I have been designing integrated assessment models that include geoengineering as an alternative climate policy. Geoengineering techniques such as Solar Radiate Management (SRM) and Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) have gained lots of attention in recent years. I have developed tools to formally assess the trade-off among mitigation and geoengineering in an uncertain environment. Furthermore, I have studied the prospect of developing Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies for achieving climate targets.

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Third, I have investigated the transition of energy system from fossil-fuel to renewable sources. I have developed an economic framework to understand the trade-offs between various R&D investment and subsidy programs.

Finally, I am involved in a set of collaborative projects to develop an climate economic model to account for human response to climate change in an array of options from adaptation to sea-level rise, to migration, labor supply, food security, and gender pay gap.

Although most of my current research is devoted to climate change policy, my academic and professional background is in engineering. I earned my Bachelor of Engineering degree in Civil Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology in 2002 and later received my master's degree in Construction Engineering and Management in 2005 from Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, Iran. I earned my second master’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Systems Management from the American University of Armenia in 2007. I worked as a professional engineer in several developing projects in Kenya, the UAE, and Armenia after that. 

In 2009 I joined the doctoral program In Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. After finishing my PhD program I moved to Stanford University and worked as a postdoctoral research scientist at Carnegie Institute for Science at Dr. Ken Caldeira's lab. 

I have been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including two Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Graduate Student Awards in 2011 and 2013. While pursuing my degree, I interned at the Representative Rush Holt’s office in Washington D.C. in 2011. In 2012 I was awarded as a Sam-Nunn security fellow at Georgia Tech. In 2017, a paper that I co-authored was awarded the 2017 Thomas Fitch Rowland Prize from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

My research projects are listed below. You can click on each project to learn more about the project and the list of publications and presentations related to that project.