People Type: Leadership & Staff

Nadya Mason is the dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago and the Robert J. Zimmer Professor of Molecular Engineering. She also serves as the Interim Vice President for Science, Innovation, and Partnerships. She specializes in experimental studies of quantum materials, with a research focus on the electronic properties of nanoscale and correlated systems, such as nano-scale wires, atomically thin membranes, and nanostructured superconductors. Her research is relevant to applications involving nanoscale and quantum computing elements.

Before becoming dean of PME, Mason was the Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she directed the Illinois Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and also served as founding director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (I-MRSEC).

In addition to maintaining a rigorous research program and teaching, Mason works to increase diversity in the physical sciences, particularly through mentoring, and is former chair of the APS Committee on Minorities, where she helped initiate the “National Mentoring Community.” Mason can also be seen promoting science on local TV, at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and in a TED talk on “Scientific Curiosity.”

Mason received her Bachelor of Science from Harvard University and her doctorate from Stanford University, both in physics. Among her many honors, she is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has been recognized for her work with awards, including the 2024 Robert Holland Jr. Award, the 2019 APS Bouchet Award, 2012 APS Maria Goeppert Mayer Award, and the 2009 Denise Denton Emerging Leader Award.

Y. Shirley Meng is a professor of molecular engineering at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. She also serves as the founding faculty director of the Energy Technologies initiative at the Institute for Climate and Growth at the University of Chicago, as well as the chief scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory and director of the Energy Storage Research Alliance (ESRA).

Her work pioneers in discovering and designing better materials for energy storage by a unique combination of first-principles computation guided materials discovery and design, and advanced characterization with electron/neutron/photon sources. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group – Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC). She has received several prestigious awards, including the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association Battery IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016), Science Award Electrochemistry by BASF and Volkswagen (2014) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). Meng is the elected fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS) and elected fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS). She serves as the editor-in-chief for Materials Research Society MRS Energy & Sustainability Journal.

Meng received her PhD in Advanced Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005, and her bachelor’s degree with first-class honor from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2000. She worked as a postdoctoral research fellow and became a research scientist at MIT from 2005-2007. Meng was the Zable Endowed Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at the University of California-San Diego (UCSD) before joining PME at the University of Chicago.

David Keith has worked near the interface of climate science, energy technology, and public policy since 1990. He took first prize in Canada’s national physics prize exam, won MIT’s prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment. Keith is Professor of Geophysical Sciences and founding faculty director of the Climate Systems Engineering initiative at the University of Chicago.

Best known for his work on the science, technology, and public policy of solar geoengineering, Keith led the development of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program before moving to Chicago in 2023. His policy work has ranged from analysis of electricity markets and carbon prices to research on public and expert perceptions of risky technologies. Keith’s hardware work includes the first interferometer for atoms, a high-accuracy infrared spectrometer for NASA’s ER-2, the development of an air contactor, and the development of a stratospheric propelled balloon experiment for solar geoengineering.

Keith founded Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company developing technology to capture CO₂ from ambient air. He teaches science and technology policy, climate science, and solar geoengineering. He has reached more than 150,000 students worldwide with an edX energy course and has authored more than 200 academic publications with a total citation count of more than 20,000. Keith has written for the public through numerous opinion pieces and wrote the book A Case for Climate Engineering.

Ashwin Rode is director, scientific research in the Department of Economics at the University of Chicago. At EPIC, he is working on the Global Climate Prospectus, a multidisciplinary endeavor that will assess climate change impacts around the world. His other research areas include the political economy of environmental and climate policy and natural resource management. Ashwin received an A.B. in Economics from the University of Chicago, an M.S. in Economics from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Robert H. Topel conducts research on many areas of economics including labor economics, industrial organization and antitrust, business strategy, health economics, energy economics, national security economics, economic growth, and public policy. He is the Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State and Co-Director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago.

Topel is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, an elected member of the Conference for Research on Income and Wealth, an elected founding member of the National Academy of Social Insurance, and a member of the Brookings Panel on Economic Activity. He has held visiting and research positions at a number of institutions, including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, the World Bank, the Economics Research Center of the National Opinion Research Center, and the Rand Corporation.

Topel and fellow Chicago Booth faculty member Kevin Murphy won the 2007 Kenneth J. Arrow Award for the best research paper in health economics. The award is given annually by the International Health Economics Association. They were cited for their paper “The Value of Health and Longevity,” published in the Journal of Political Economy. In their paper, Murphy and Topel found that cumulative gains in life expectancy after 1900 were worth more than $1.2 million to the average American in 2000, whereas post-1970 gains added about $3.2 trillion per year to national wealth, equal to about half of gross domestic product (GDP). Potential gains from future health improvements are also large, they found. For example, a one percent reduction in cancer mortality would be worth $500 billion.

Topel is the author of several books. These include The Welfare State in Transition with Richard Freeman and Birgitta Swedenborg, Labor Market Data and Measurement with John Haltiwanger and Marilyn Manser, and Measuring the Gains from Medical Research: An Economic Approach with Kevin M. Murphy. Topel has written more than 60 articles and monographs in professional journals.

From 1993 to 2003 he served as editor of the Journal of Political Economy, and from 1991 to 1993 he was a member of the editorial board of the American Economic Review, the two leading professional journals in economics. Topel was also a founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics. In 2004, he was elected an inaugural Fellow of the Society of Labor Economists, and the following year he received the Research America Eugene Garfield Prize for Medical and Health Research.

Topel has been at the University of Chicago since 1979, with the exception of an appointment as a professor of economics at UCLA in 1986. In 2006, he was the Kirby Distinguished Visiting Professor of Economics at Texas A&M University. He is also a founding partner of Chicago Partners, LLC.

He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1974 and a PhD in economics from UCLA in 1980.

Robert Rosner is a theoretical physicist, on the faculty of the University of Chicago since 1987, where he is the William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in the departments of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics, as well as in the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. He served as Argonne National Laboratory’s Chief Scientist and Associate Laboratory Director for Physical, Biological and Computational Sciences (2002-05), and was Argonne’s Laboratory Director from 2005-09; he was the founding chair of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory Directors’ Council (2007-09). His degrees are all in physics (BA, Brandeis University; PhD, Harvard University). He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001, and to the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (as a Foreign Member) in 2004; he is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Most of his scientific work has been related to fluid dynamics and plasma physics problems, as well as in applied mathematics and computational physics, especially in the development of modern high-performance computer simulation tools, with a particular interest in complex systems (ranging from astrophysical systems to nuclear fission reactors). Within the past few years, he has been increasingly involved in energy technologies, and in the public policy issues that relate to the development and deployment of various energy production and consumption technologies, including especially nuclear energy, the electrification of transport, and energy use in urban environments. He is the founding director of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago (EPIC), located at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, Booth School of Business and Social Sciences Division of the University of Chicago.

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School, the Founding Faculty Director of the Institute for Climate & Sustainable Growth, as well as the Director of the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He was formerly the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. Greenstone also directed The Hamilton Project, which studies policies to promote economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations around the world. Additionally, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change as a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab. He also created the Air Quality Life Index that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.