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Mort
David Webster
Assistant
Professor, Engineering Systems Division
Mort
David Webster is Assistant Professor of Engineering Systems
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research
and teaching focuses on environmental and energy systems
analysis and decision-making under uncertainty. In July
2008 he became the first junior member of the faculty with
an ESD-only appointment.
Professor
Webster earned his Ph.D. from ESD in 2000 with a dissertation
about decision-making and climate policy, and was a Research
Associate at MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy
of Global Change during the 2000–2001 academic year.
From 2001–2006 he was an assistant professor of public
policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
where he taught several classes on public policy analysis,
including one that dealt specifically with policy analysis
for global climate change. He returned to MIT in 2006 as
a Visiting Professor in the Department of Earth, Atmospheric
and Planetary Sciences and the MIT Joint Program on the
Science and Policy of Global Change.
Professor
Webster's ESD courses will include a seminar on energy and
environmental systems analysis and a doctoral methods course
focused on stochastic processes and intertemporal optimization
under uncertainty.
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 environmental and energy systems 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. He has published in such journals as Science,
Climatic Change, Atmospheric Environment, Climate Policy
and Climate Dynamics, and is an Associate Editor
of Energy Economics.
His
sponsored research includes an NSF grant from the Human
and Social Dynamics program to develop stochastic models
of technological change, EPA funding to study alternative
designs for reducing NOx emissions from electric power generators
in the northeastern United States, and DOE funding to study
the potential for carbon capture and sequestration on coal-fired
generators in the western U.S. electricity grid.
Professor
Webster holds an M.S. from MIT's Technology and Policy Program
(1996), and worked as a research assistant in the MIT Energy
Laboratory from 1993–1994. He earned a B.S.E. in Computer
Science and Engineering (1988) from the University of Pennsylvania.
Early in his career, Professor Webster worked as a software
engineer, and on artificial intelligence research.
Updated
July 2008
News
and announcements:
MIT
Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
presents new analysis of climate risk; Mort Webster,
lead author of the new report, explains the analysis (MIT
News Office - October 2, 2009)
Prof.
Mort Webster's climate change policy study cited in Environmental
Protection magazine – Study: Short-term Climate Goals
Needed (July 9, 2008)
Prof.
Mort Webster's carbon emissions study in The Economic Times
– Short-term goals to be focused on to reduce carbon
emissions (July 3, 2008)
Prof.
Mort Webster receives $750,000 NSF grant for climate change
research (July 1, 2008)
Article
on path-dependency, decision analysis and climate change
policy by ESD Assistant Professor Mort Webster (June 2008
issue of Decision Analysis) (July 1, 2008)
Mort
David Webster Joins ESD Faculty as Assistant Professor
(July 1, 2008)
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