Prospective graduate students who are interested in working with Dr. DeCarolis should apply for admission to the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, and indicate a preference for the Water Resources and Environmental Engineering program. In the statement of purpose, it is helpful to specifically indicate interest in working with Dr. DeCarolis and to explain relevant background, interests, and ideas for research that are likely to be of mutual interest. Financial aid is available in the form of stipend, health insurance, and tuition but is often highly competitive. Those seeking financial aid should clearly indicate their interest in a research assistantship, a teaching assistantship, or either.
Fully funded PhD or MSc assistantships working with Dr. DeCarolis are available for highly qualified applicants interested in energy systems and climate change mitigation. An 88-core computer cluster is currently being built in order to perform energy systems modeling with the MARKAL (MARKet ALlocation) model. Additional work is planned to build a new model that optimizes capacity planning and operation of the electric and transportation sectors with high temporal resolution. A primary objective is to characterize robust energy pathways that account for operational constraints as well as the large uncertainties associated technology cost and readiness, policy implementation, and climate change impacts. Rigorous sensitivity and uncertainty analysis is a key feature of this work.
Candidates with academic/research background in operations research or engineering encouraged to apply. Please contact Dr. DeCarolis for more information.