Mort
David Webster Joins ESD Faculty as
Assistant Professor
July
1, 2008
Mort
David Webster, Visiting Professor
in MIT's Department of Earth, Atmospheric,
and Planetary Sciences and the MIT
Joint Program on the Science and Policy
of Global Change, today joins the
faculty of MIT's Engineering Systems
Division (ESD) as an Assistant Professor
Professor
Webster—whose research and teaching
focuses on climate change and public
policy—becomes the first junior
member of the faculty with an ESD-only
appointment.
"Mort
Webster is one of the most astute
scholars working on climate change
policy analysis. He brings to his
work sophisticated tools for managing
the uncertainty associated with the
prediction of climate change and the
policies designed to mitigate them.
We are fortunate to be able to welcome
him to the ESD faculty, and look forward
to working from him in this critical
area of inquiry," said Yossi
Sheffi, Professor of Engineering Systems
and Director of ESD.
Professor
Webster earned his Ph.D. from ESD
in 2000 with a dissertation about
decision-making and climate policy,
and was an assistant professor of
public policy at the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill from
2001–2006. At UNC, he taught
several classes on public policy analysis,
including one on policy analysis for
global climate change.
Professor
Webster's affiliation with MIT's Joint
Program on the Science and Policy
of Global Change extends back several
years; he was a Research Associate
at the Program from 2000–2001.
Professor
Webster is interested in exploring
the interface between formal quantitative
models and the policy process. His
research focuses on how to analyze
the uncertainty in assessment models
of global climate change to produce
insights that are useful to the policy
community—including addressing
the role of learning in the future
on today's decisions, the effect of
uncertainty on multi-stakeholder negotiations,
and better means of communicating
results to non-experts.
Professor
Webster holds an M.S. from MIT's Technology
and Policy Program (1996) and a B.S.E.
in Computer Science and Engineering
(1988) from the University of Pennsylvania.
He is an Associate Editor of Energy
Economics.
His
most recent article, "Incorporating
Path Dependency into Decision Analytic
Methods: An Application to Global
Climate Change Policy," appears
in the June 2008 issue of Decision
Analysis.
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