Full Name
Costa Samaras
Job Title
Director, Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Company
Carnegie Mellon University
Brief Biography
Constantine (Costa) Samaras is the director of the Carnegie Mellon University Scott Institute for Energy Innovation, the Trustee Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy. His research focuses on the pathways to clean, climate-safe, equitable, and secure energy and infrastructure systems. He is a founder and director of both the Center for Engineering and Resilience for Climate Adaptation and the Power Sector Carbon Index. He is, by courtesy, a faculty member in CMU’s H. John Heinz III College of Information Systems and Public Policy.
From 2021-2024, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as the principal assistant director for energy, OSTP Chief Advisor for Energy Policy, and then OSTP Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition. With more than two decades of experience in energy, transportation, and climate change, he has served on three National Academies Committees evaluating emerging energy technologies and earth systems research, served as the chair of the ASCE Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, and served on the Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Committee the Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board. He has published numerous studies examining electric and automated vehicles, renewable electricity, life cycle assessment, clean energy transitions and decarbonization policy, AI ethics, and climate resilience, in journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Nature Climate Change, Environmental Research Letters, Climatic Change, and others. He was also a contributor to the 4th National Climate Assessment, and was one of the lead author contributors to the Global Energy Assessment.
In 2014, he created the course “Climate Change Adaptation for Infrastructure,” which is one of the first civil and environmental engineering courses in the world that teaches climate change adaptation to engineers.
Costa received a joint Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon, an M.P.A. in public policy from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and a B.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University.
From 2021-2024, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) as the principal assistant director for energy, OSTP Chief Advisor for Energy Policy, and then OSTP Chief Advisor for the Clean Energy Transition. With more than two decades of experience in energy, transportation, and climate change, he has served on three National Academies Committees evaluating emerging energy technologies and earth systems research, served as the chair of the ASCE Committee on Adaptation to a Changing Climate, and served on the Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Committee the Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board. He has published numerous studies examining electric and automated vehicles, renewable electricity, life cycle assessment, clean energy transitions and decarbonization policy, AI ethics, and climate resilience, in journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, Nature Climate Change, Environmental Research Letters, Climatic Change, and others. He was also a contributor to the 4th National Climate Assessment, and was one of the lead author contributors to the Global Energy Assessment.
In 2014, he created the course “Climate Change Adaptation for Infrastructure,” which is one of the first civil and environmental engineering courses in the world that teaches climate change adaptation to engineers.
Costa received a joint Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering and engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon, an M.P.A. in public policy from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and a B.S. in civil engineering from Bucknell University.
