Crafting Human-centered Energy Solutions
Clockwise from top left: Xinyuan Huang, Jinyu Shiwang, Huilin Luo, Pengfei Wang, Wei Peng, Carla Campos, and Anna Lee
Current Members
Wei Peng
Wei Peng is an assistant professor at Princeton University, with a joint appointment between the School of Public and International Affairs and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. She is also the associate director for the Initiative for Sustainable Energy Policy in the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Wei's research aims to inform energy policy in both emerging markets and advanced economies to align their decarbonization efforts with local environmental and socioeconomic concerns, such as air pollution, public health, water conservation, and economic development.
Hui Yang
Hui Yang joined the group and the Environmental Engineering program at Penn State in the beautiful fall of 2019. Prior to this, she received a BS in Civil Engineering from University of Macau and a MS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Carnegie Mellon, where she focused on air quality engineering. Hui is interested in addressing various environmental and social issues, especially those related to air quality, climate and health. When not working on research or courses, she could be found sleeping at home, on the way looking for good food, or exploring the world.
Xinyuan Huang
Xinyuan Huang is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Xinyuan’s research focuses on evaluating air pollution, climate impacts, and environmental policies with uncertainties using integrated assessment models. Xinyuan has a broad interest in statistics, economics, and natural sciences. Prior to joining Penn State, Xinyuan worked as a data scientist at S.F. Express, the largest logistics company in China. Xinyuan likes classical music, road trips, and some card games.
Carla Campos
Carla Campos is a first-year PhD student in the Environmental Engineering program at the Pennsylvania State University. Prior to this, Carla pursued a Master’s in International Affairs with a concentration in Data Analytics and Energy Policy at the Pennsylvania State University and a BS in Agricultural Engineering at National Agrarian University. She has a Graduate Certificate in Applied Statistics from Eberly College of Science. Her research interests focused on evaluating the health effects of air pollution, decarbonization, climate change, and energy policy. Carla is interested in applying statistical, optimization, and computational methods to assess impacts related to climate change. In her free time, she loves singing, traveling, and watching movies.
Pengfei Wang
Pengfei Wang joined the team as a postdoctoral scholar in Jan 2022. His research
focus on air pollution modeling and health impact assessment considering the interactions with climate policy and social equity. He holds a Ph.D. on the "Understanding Air Pollutants and Meteorology Interactions Using Chemical Transport Models" from Louisiana State
University. He enjoys cooking and traveling.
Huilin Luo
Huilin Luo is a PhD student in Environmental Engineering starting in 2022. She has her bachelor's and master's degrees from the School of Environment of Tsinghua University, with a concentration of global environmental issues. She also minored psychology during undergraduate. Her research interest lies in how to integrate social concerns (particularly the political and behavioral irrationalities) in climate policy analysis using integrated models. She enjoys playing basketball, travelling, and staying with her cats when she is not trapped in research.
Jinyu Shiwang
Jinyu Shiwang is a first-year PhD student of the Environmental Engineering program at the Penn State University. Prior to this, Jinyu pursued a BS in Environmental Science from Nanjing University, and a MS in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. His research interests focused on evaluating health effects of air pollution, climate change and decarbonization. During his spare time, Jinyu likes playing card games, cooking, and travelling.
Mel George
Mel George is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Wei Peng Research Group
at Princeton University, co-appointed with the Center for Global Sustainability at the
University of Maryland – College Park. Mel’s primary research interest is to
represent real world facets into energy-climate models and thereby improving the
science used at the decision-making table. He seeks to bridge the gap between
science and policy, translating complex modeling results into socio-politically
feasible actions.
An electrical engineer by training, he graduated summa cum laude from the Indian
Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, India, and holds a PhD in Policy Studies from
the University of Maryland. Mel’s diverse research interests seek to bring together
the natural and social sciences to better answer questions at the intersection of
energy-climate technologies, and their implications for sustainable development
and broader human well-being. Mel enjoys working on interdisciplinary problems at
different scales and believes policy failure often lies outside technology. Applying
integrated assessment models (such as GCAM) in combination with other
downscaling tools, his work investigates distributional effects of energy-climate
policies. He is especially interested in questions of energy equity and justice,
economic nationalism, climate mitigation effort sharing and second-best policies in
fragmented and non-ideal scenarios. He also works on modeling emissions trading
schemes and energy policy in India.
Gill-Ran Jeong
Gill-Ran Jeongis a postdoc in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences at Penn State University. She joined Prof. Peng’s group for the Baltimore-Social Environment Collaborative (BSEC), a joint project with Prof. Davis’s group at Penn State from December 2023. She finished her Ph.D. at Georgia Institute of Technology, and her research goals are to understand the physiochemical characteristics of atmospheric constituents, model their properties, and assess their impacts on the global/regional environment
Yueqi Jiang
Yueqi Jiang is a postdoc in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Penn State. She joined Prof. Peng’s group for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Health and Air Quality applied sciences program, a joint project with Prof. Davis’s group at Penn State. She has her bachelor’s and doctor’s degrees from Tsinghua University. Her research interests focus on air quality modeling and impact of climate change on air pollution.
Anna Lee
Anna Lee joined the group as an undergraduate research assistant and is now the new lab manager. She graduated from Penn State with a degree in Earth Science & Policy. She is interested in learning how to use integrated assessment models for policy-relevant work and how to incorporate equity concerns into our decarbonization strategies. In her free time, Anna enjoys exploring different hiking places, cooking, and gardening.
Group Alumni
Wei-Ting Yang
Master of International Affairs
Class of 2020
Aizhan Abilgazina
Master of International Affairs
Class of 2020
Aparajita Sengupta
Master of International Affairs
Class of 2020
Anjali Sharma
Adam VanGorder
Postdoc 2020-2022
Now Assistant Professor at Azim Premji University
Master of International Affairs
Class of 2022
