Patricia Levi

Patricia Levi is a PhD candidate in the energy and environment track at the department of management science and engineering, and is advised by Prof. John Weyant. Her research uses tools from economics and operations research to improve regulations and policy that reduce environmental impacts in the electricity sector. She studies how flexibility in customer demand could be harnessed to help incorporate renewable generation in the electricity grid and enable more efficient operation. As well, she is working with Stanford's Sustainable Finance Initiative to understand how regulators can create market rules that enable storage to provide the most value to the electricity grid and be attractive to investors. In 2016 she was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduation Research Fellowship to support her PhD research.

Prior to Stanford, she received a MS in technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, she worked with the MIT Energy Initiative and the TATA Center for Technology and Design on energy access in rural India and east Africa. Her research focused on developing a model for identifying locations where micro-grids or stand-alone home systems might be more efficient than extending a centralized grid. While there, she co-founded and co-edited a column on Energy for Development, showcasing research from around MIT on sustainable energy in the developing world.

Patricia served as a policy analyst at the Climate Policy Initiative from 2013-2014, where she focused on projects related to renewable energy and energy efficiency finance. She completed a bachelors degree in earth and planetary science at Harvard University, where she also minored in environmental science and public policy. Her senior thesis focused on atmospheric modeling of carbon dioxide emissions and transport.