Western Pennsylvania and West Virginia have all the ingredients needed to be a powerhouse of industrial innovation: grid infrastructure, strong industrial bases, and the presence of research universities with deep expertise in artificial intelligence (AI), energy systems, robotics, and automation. The challenge is how to ensure the region leverages these strengths to lead in—and, importantly, benefit from—the next wave of economic opportunity, spurred by the development of ne

Curtis, S. E., B. Fischhoff, and V. J. Karplus. 2025. Subsistence preference in practice: access decisions in salmon fisheries in the Alaskan Yukon River. Ecology and Society 30(4):43. View the paper here

The Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation hosted a research workshop on Accelerating Green Steel at Carnegie Mellon University. The workshop gathered experts on iron and steelmaking from around the globe on September 4-5, 2025. The workshop was co-hosted by the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research (CISR), with support from the Industrial Decarbonization Analysis, Benchmarking, and Action Partnership, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation. The workshop b

The outcomes of the 2025 CMU Accelerating Green Steel Workshop, co-hosted on campus from September 4-5, 2025 by the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation and the Center for Iron and Steelmaking Research, are discussed in this CMU news article by Scott Institute Communications Manager, Giordana Verrengia, published November 13, 2025. Read the story here.

Karplus, V and C Samaras (2025), ‘Downsizing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘, in Gensler, G, S Johnson, U Panizza and B Weder di Mauro (eds), The Economic Consequences of The Second Trump Administration: A Preliminary Assessment, CEPR Press, Paris & London. View the chapter here.

Armitage, Sara; Barrage, Lint; Burtraw, Dallas; Colmer, Jonathan; De Preux, Laure; Gillignham, Kenneth T.; Hawkins-Pierot, Jonathan; Holt, Charles; Karplus, Valerie J.; Löfgren, Åsa; Martin, Ralf; Miller, Nathan; Muûls, Mirabelle; Osborne, Matthew; Severnini, Edson; Shobe, Willian; Sileo, Grethcen; Smirnyagin, Vladimir; Stoerk Thomas; Tsyvinski, Aleh; Wagner, Katherine; Wagner, Ulrich J.; Wu, Xi (2025). New frontiers in research on industrial decarbonization. Science Vol. 39

Valerie Karplus just published a new discussion paper entitled Sustaining the Global Energy Transition with the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. The paper considers the implications of high interest rates, trade tensions, and energy geopolitics for the deployment of technologies to decarbonize industries worldwide and argues for strategies that maintain momentum that are connected with objectives beyond climate alone.  View the paper here . A related LinkedIn post about

The Resilient Energy Technology and Infrastructure Consortium , led by a team at West Virginia University in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and over 60 regional partners, was selected on Sept. 18 as a finalist in the competition for a prestigious $160 million National Science Foundation Regional Innovation Engines award. The LEO Group is involved in supporting the group’s R&D and policy engagement efforts to grow a vibrant energy

LEO Principal Investigator Valerie Karplus presented research and facilitated a hackathon at this year's Future of Heavy Industries USA...

The Laboratory for Energy and Innovation celebrated the graduation of three newly-minted PhDs in Engineering and Public Policy at CMU’s...

Read LEO member Dr. Joanna Slusarewicz's Engineering and Public Policy Ph.D. thesis below.

This year's Summer Academy for Math and Science (SAMS) program featured a dynamic College of Engineering master class and lab tour called Into the fire: How to make iron and steel, understanding its environmental impacts. Students learned about how the steel industry affects climate change, local air pollution, and health, as well as technologies that could reduce these impacts, and brainstormed potential solutions involving policy and neighboring communities. They examined a

Research by LEO group members Jillian Miles and Valerie Karplus, co-authored with Christophe Combemale and Chris Pistorius, on the...

" Thanks to a Sustainable Technologies for Steel Manufacturing Grant from the Association for Iron and Steel Technology (AIST), Carnegie Mellon researchers spent the spring semester developing decarbSTEEL (Decarbonizing Steelmaking TechnoEconomic EvaLuation) , an open-source, highly customizable Excel-based framework for assessing the cost and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions of different steel decarbonization strategies.  The faculty leads were Chris Pistorius , co-directo

"The adoption of decarbonized production methods in heavy manufacturing industries is widely considered a key step toward global climate...

On Friday, April 25th, LEO Ph.D. student JP Pieper and Professor Valerie Karplus participated in the 2025 Random Distance Run, hosted by...

Miles, Jillian; Combemale, Christophe; Karplus, Valerie J.; Pistorius, P. Chris (2025). Simulating regional workforce impacts of...

LEO Ph.D. student JP Pieper was awarded the Herbert L. Toor Award for his Part A research. Congratulations, JP! About the award: The...

LEO Ph.D. student Jillian Miles recently completed an 8-week "Intro to Stained Glass" course at the Pittsburgh Glass Center . Miles...

Zhang, Da; Karplus, Valerie J. (2025). Management practices and manufacturing firm responses to a randomized energy audit. Nature Energy....