Welcome.

Valerie J. Karplus is an Associate Professor (with tenure) in the Engineering and Public Policy Department at Carnegie Mellon University.

Karplus studies resource and environmental management in firms operating in diverse national and industry contexts, with a focus on the role of institutions and management practices in explaining performance. Karplus is an expert on China’s energy system, including technology and business model innovation, energy system governance, and the management of air pollution and climate change.

Karplus was previously on the faculty at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where she maintains a visiting appointment. She has worked as a Research Scientist in the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow in the development policy section of the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany and the KfW Development Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, and as a Luce Scholar in the agricultural biotechnology industry in Beijing, China. From 2011 to 2016, she directed the MIT-Tsinghua China Energy and Climate Project, a five-year research effort focused on analyzing the design of energy and climate change policy in China, and its domestic and global impacts.

She holds a BS in biochemistry and political science from Yale University and a PhD in engineering systems from MIT.