
Fiona Burlig comes to EPIC for a one-year postdoctoral appointment, after which she will remain part of the community as an assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. She studies energy and environmental economics, with a focus on the developing world. Her ongoing research examines the development impacts of rural electrification, the economic consequences of electricity supply outages, and the private and social costs of misallocation on the supply side of the Indian electricity market. Burlig also studies new empirical methods, including applying machine learning to quantify the effectiveness of energy-efficiency upgrades in K-12 schools in California and new tools for designing randomized controlled trials across contexts.

Also joining the team is James Rising, who will be at EPIC for a six-month appointment in partnership with the Center for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy (RDCEP). Rising is a broadly interdisciplinary researcher who draws on analytical approaches from multiple fields and develops computational models to understand integrated global challenges. He is particularly interested in understanding the interplay between environmental and human systems—focusing on the impacts of climate change, but also the water-energy-food nexus. Through his climate work, he is part of the Climate Impact Lab research consortium co-led by Greenstone, as well as RDCEP, an interdisciplinary effort aimed at improving policymakers’ ability to make decisions under climate uncertainty. RDCEP is led by EPIC-affiliated faculty Elisabeth Moyer, Amir Jina, and Michael Greenstone and is supported by the National Science Foundation.