Director - Jeremy Firestone
Research Director - Willett Kempton
Other Governing Scientists/Members
Dr. Suresh G. Advani
Dr. Meryl P. Gardner
Dr. John A. Madsen
Dr. Ajay Prasad
Dr. Dana Veron
Affiliated Scientists/Members
Dr. Christina L. Archer
Dr. Jeffrey Buler
Dr. James J. Corbett
Dr. Stephen Dexter
Dr. Fouad Kiamilev
Dr. Fabrice Veron
Dr. George R. Parsons
Ms. Bonnie Ram
Dr. W. Gregory (Greg) Shriver
Director – Jeremy Firestone
Dr. Jeremy Firestone, Ph.D., J.D., is a Professor in College of Earth, Ocean and Environment (CEOE) and Director of CCPI. Dr. Firestone is an expert on permitting of offshore wind and transmission, marine spatial planning, and environmental constraints on offshore development. He has made presentations on wind power at events sponsored by NREL-IEA, NYSERDA, DOE-DOI, EWEA and AWEA. Dr. Firestone served on the National Academy of Science Offshore Wind Power Workshop Planning Committee and presented offshore wind research at a separate NAS workshop on climate change. His recent research projects include offshore wind assessment; understanding offshore wind power public perceptions; modeling the cost of offshore wind power; and developing model legal frameworks for offshore wind power. He co-teaches a course on the engineering, scientific and policy aspects of offshore wind power, and teaches a course on climate change policy. He also serves on the joint UD-Gamesa research committee and is an officer of First State Marine Wind, LLC, which owns and operates the UD-Gamesawind turbine.
Research Director – Willett Kempton
Dr. Willett Kempton is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment (CEOE). Dr. Kempton is also a member of (and ex-Chair of) the Research and Development Subcommittee, Offshore Wind Working Group of the American Wind Energy Association. He is interested in environmental beliefs and values, environmental movements and integration of large-scale renewables. He has conducted offshore wind resource assessments for the US East Coast and Brazil, using buoy and QuikSCAT data. Dr. Kempton was lead author on discovery of the offshore wind leveling effect from NW-SE transmission in the Atlantic, published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Kempton created the concept of using electric cars as storage for the electric power grid, called vehicle to grid power or “V2G”, and has four submitted patents on this technology.
Other Governing Scientists/Members
Dr. Suresh G. Advani is the George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Associate Director of the Center for Composite Materials. His research focus is on transport phenomena as applied to Composite Manufacturing and Fuel Cells. Over the last two decades, he has contributed to development of the science base of composite manufacturing processes. Over the last couple of years he has applied that knowledge to provide insight into improvement and enhancement of composite wind blade manufacturing using fiber placement and liquid molding processes. He is the North American Editor for the journal Composite Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, has co-authored a text entitled Process Modeling in Composite Manufacturing, and written over 225 journal articles.
Dr. Meryl P. Gardner is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. Dr. Gardner's research interests involve viewing marketing opportunities through a consumer psychology lens, with a focus on the influence of effect on consumer behavior and the role of marketing in socially positive behavior change. She is particularly interested in consumer response to energy-efficient technologies and socially beneficial products. Her work has appeared in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Retailing, Psychology and Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Marketing Letters, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Advertising and other journals.
Dr. John A. Madsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences and is currently serving as the co-chair of the University’s Sustainability Task Force. He is immediate past-President of the Faculty Senate. His current research is focused in three major areas: 1) the geological and geotechnical aspects of offshore wind projects in which he is studying the role geotechnical properties of sediments can play in the siting of offshore wind projects; 2) coastal and estuarine geophysics by applying high-resolution geophysical methods integrated with sediment sampling to study coastal and marine inland bay, estuary, and inner continental shelf environments; and 3) earth science education in elementary and middle schools by using pedagogical context knowledge (PcxK) as a framework to examine changes in pre-service K-8 teachers' understandings of earth science content and how it is taught. Dr. Madsen offers a course in geophysical and geotechnical aspects of offshore wind power.
Dr. Ajay Prasad is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Delaware and also serves as Director of the Center for Fuel Cell Research. He has held research professor and visiting scientist positions in the Netherlands and India. The Center for Fuel Cell Research was formed to facilitate coordination amongst the approximately 20 UD faculty members working in this area, and to build ties with industries involved in fuel cells and hydrogen infrastructure activities. Professor Prasad also directs the University of Delaware Fuel Cell Bus Program whose goal is to develop and demonstrate fuel cell powered transit vehicles and hydrogen refueling stations. Professor Prasad’s other research interests include wind and ocean current energy, and vehicle to grid technology. He is also interested in energy-efficient, solar-powered buildings. He serves on the UDEI Steering Committee, and the City of Newark’s Conservation Advisory Committee.
Dr. Dana Veron is an Assistant Professor in the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering program in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Geography and is a founding member of CCPI. Dr. Veron’s recent research interests include offshore wind resource assessment, sea breeze circulation, land-ocean-atmospheric interactions, and regional climate change. Her research involves local-to-mesoscale atmospheric modeling along the Mid-Atlantic coastline and in the Arctic, as well as analysis of in situ observations of low-level winds and boundary layer clouds. Dr. Veron co-teaches the course on offshore wind power.
Affiliated Scientists/Members
Dr. Christina L. Archer is an associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment of the University of Delaware, where she has a joined appointment between the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering program and the Department of Geography. Her research interests include wind power, meteorology, air quality, climate change, and numerical modeling. She received her Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University in 2004. She held a post-doctoral researcher position there for one year and then worked as an atmospheric modeler in the air quality district of San Francisco for two years. She then joined the Carnegie Institution for Science in 2007 as a research associate for a year. In 2008, Dr. Archer joined the California State University Chico as an assistant professor in the Department of Geological and Environmental Sciences. She has been a consulting assistant professor with the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University since 2005.
Dr. Jeffrey Buler is a Research Assistant Professor in the department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. His research is focused on the movement, behavior, and ecology of birds during migratory stopover and modeling wildlife species distributions across spatial scales. Dr. Buler is also one of a handful of aeroecologists in the United States actively using the national network of weather surveillance radars to study the distribution, movement, and habitat use patterns of migratory birds and other flying animals in the airspace. His radar research includes developing techniques to quantify bird distributions, assessing bird response to habitat management and restoration activities, identifying important stopover areas, and examining how migrating birds respond to extreme weather events and negotiate ecological barriers to migration. He is also studying the flight activity of birds and bats at the University of Delaware’s wind turbine in Lewes, DE.
Dr. James J. Corbett is a Professor in the College of Earth Ocean and Environment with joint appointment in Civil and Environmental Engineering in the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware. He is a leading collaborator in a multi-university Sustainable Intermodal Freight Transportation Research (SIFTR) program, an international research collaboration to improve the effective use of highway, waterway, railroad, and air transportation infrastructure. Dr. Corbett also conducts technology-policy research related to transportation, including groundbreaking research on air emissions from maritime transport, energy and environmental impacts of freight transportation, and assessment of technological and policy strategies for improving goods movement. Among more than 175 publications related to shipping and multimodal transportation, Dr. Corbett coauthored the 2000 IMO Study on Greenhouse Gases from Ships, and the Second IMO Greenhouse Gas Study 2009i.
Dr. Stephen Dexter is a Professor of Applied Science and Marine Biology at the CEOE. Prior to accepting a position at UD, Dr. Dexter conducted a post-doc in Marine Corrosion and Fouling at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Department of Ocean Engineering. Dr. Dexter conducts research in a variety of areas, including durability of materials for, and marine corrosion and biocorrosion of, wind power systems. He also undertakes research on the influence of microbial films on corrosion and corrosion electrochemistry; cathodic protection and calcareous deposition; marine corrosion and biofouling control; bioattachment and bioadhesion. He’s served on the editorial boards of Corrosion (1988-present) and Biofueling journals (1992-2002) and was an Assistant Editor for Biocorrosion, Biofouling Journal (2003 – 2006). Dr. Dexter has been a technical consultant on numerous industrial, government and private projects, including the US Navy, DARPA and NASA.
Dr. Fouad Kiamilev is a Professor in the Department Electrical and Computer Engineering at UD where he directs a research group called CVORG (CMOS VLSI Optimization Research Group). Dr. Kiamilev’s research group specializes in custom hardware design for embedded applications. In area of energy, his research involves design of embedded systems for electric vehicles and V2G technology as well as power conversion circuits. As a hobby, the group likes to tackle the security problems of today from a hardware perspective. Since 1997, he has advised fourteen Ph.D. students and twenty M.S. students. His graduates are employed by leading academic and industrial organizations in the United States.
Dr. Fabrice Veron is a Professor of the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering Group within the School of Marine Science and Policy at UD. Dr. Veron also holds a joint appointment in Civil and Environmental engineering at UD and has spent time as a visiting researcher in France at the University of Bordeaux's Mechanical Engineering department. Dr. Veron's research focuses on air-sea interaction and the small scale fluid dynamics at the surface of the ocean. He is particularly interested in the generation of turbulence on both sides of natural free surfaces, such as that generated by breaking surface waves and air-flow separation. He is also conducting research on the transport and evaporation of marine aerosols as well as the turbulence generated by rainfall. Dr. Veron has extensive experience in wave measurements and modeling, coupled air-sea surface wave related problems including wave turbulence modulations, and the influence of wave on air sea fluxes and wave modeling.
Dr. George R. Parsons holds a joint appointment as Professor in the Marine Policy Program in the School of Marine Science and Policy and in the Department of Economics in the Alfred Lerner College of Business. He is presently the Director of the Marine Policy Program. Most of Dr. Parsons’ research centers around understanding consumers’ preferences for environmental goods. He is a specialist in choice modeling techniques including travel cost models, hedonic price models, contingent valuation, and choice experiments. He has experience in survey research, discrete-choice econometrics, applied welfare economics, and consumer demand. His most closely related work is choice models valuing the attributes of electric vehicles, the visual disamenity of offshore wind power, beach closures (including beach narrowing due to sea level rise), and shorebird recreation. His work appears in the JEEM, Resource and Energy Economics, Environmental and Resource Economics, Land Economics, and other field journals in environmental economics.
Ms. Bonnie Ram is Principal of Ram Power, L.L.C. --- advancing the siting of utility-scale renewable energy in the U.S, E.U., & China. She has 30 years of experience in planning and directing multidisciplinary energy projects relating to environmental and social science analyses. Her primary clients for the last ten years of federal consulting were NREL and DOE where she was the co-author of the first International Energy Agency (IEA) technical annex focused on offshore wind energy, co-manager of the DOE’s 20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030: Increasing Wind Energy's Contribution to U.S. Electricity Supply, lead author of An Integrated Risk Framework for Gigawatt Scale Deployment of Renewable Energy, and co-author (with Walt Musial) of NREL’s Large Scale Offshore Wind Power in the U.S: Assessment of Opportunities and Barriers.
Dr. W. Gregory (Greg) Shriver is an Assistant Professor of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware where he is engaged in collaborative projects related to restoration, avian ecology, monitoring, and conservation. He is presently working with collaborators to: 1) develop a salt marsh integrity monitoring protocol for USFWS, 2) address the long-term (30 + yrs) effects of forest fragmentation on a neo-tropical migratory bird reproductive success and mating systems, 3) investigate the effects of tidal marsh management practices on breeding birds, 4) determine the effects of sea level rise and tidal marsh birds on the east coast, and 5) and determine the prevalence of Campylobacter in wild birds of eastern North America. He is currently assessing the post-construction impacts on avian and bat species at the UD Lewes Wind Turbine. This project is focused on estimating the seasonal mortality risk.