Phil Levine is Katharine Coman and A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He has also served as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers.  Phil received a BS degree with honors from Cornell University in 1985 and a PhD from Princeton University in 1990.  He has been a member of the faculty at Wellesley since 1991.  He has written dozens of journal articles and five books devoted to the statistical analysis of social policy and its impact on individual behavior. His most recent book, A Problem of Fit: How the Complexity of College Pricing Hurts Students – and Universities (University of Chicago Press) analyzes the system of pricing in higher education and ways that we can change it to improve access. Levine is also the founder and CEO of MyinTuition Corp., a non-profit organization that supplies a vastly simplified financial aid calculator to dozens of colleges and universities.  

JOHN DEUTCH is an emeritus Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Deutch has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1970 and has served as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, Dean of Science, and Provost. Mr. Deutch has published over 160 technical publications in physical chemistry, as well as numerous publications on technology, energy, international security, and public policy issues. He served as Director of Central Intelligence from May 1995-December 1996. From 1994-1995, he served as Deputy Secretary of Defense and served as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology from 1993-1994. He has also served as Director of Energy Research (1977-1979), Acting Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology (1979), and Undersecretary (1979-80) in the United States Department of Energy. He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.

DAVID KEITH has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology, and public policy since ’91. Best known for his work on the science, technology, and public policy of solar geoengineering, David led the development of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program. He took first prize in Canada’s national physics prize exam, won MIT’s prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was one of TIME Magazine’s Heroes of the Environment. David is a Professor at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and at the Harvard Kennedy School, and founder of Carbon Engineering, a Canadian company developing technology to capture CO2 from ambient air.

GILBERT METCALF is the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service and Professor of Economics at Tufts University. In addition, he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a University Fellow at Resources For The Future. Metcalf’s research focuses on policy evaluation and design in the area of energy and climate change. He has frequently testified before Congress, served on expert panels for the National Academies of Sciences and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and served as a consultant to numerous other organizations. During 2011 and 2012, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environment and Energy at the U.S. Department of Treasury where he was the founding U.S. Board Member for the UN based Green Climate Fund. He has published extensively in academic journals and books on various topics including energy and tax policy.  His most recent book, Paying for Pollution: Why a Carbon Tax is Good for America, was published by Oxford University Press last year.  Metcalf received a B.A. in Mathematics from Amherst College, an M.S. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Ufuk Akcigit is the Arnold C. Harberger Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is an elected Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Center for Economic Studies, and a Distinguished Research Fellow at Koc University. He has received a BA in economics at Koc University, 2003, and Ph.D. in economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2009. As a macroeconomist, Akcigit’s research centers on economic growth, technological creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, productivity, and firm dynamics. His research has been repeatedly published in the top economics journals, cited by numerous policy reports, and the popular media.

The contributions of Akcigit’s research has been recognised by the National Science Foundation with the CAREER Grant (NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty), Kaufmann Foundation’s Junior Faculty Grant, and Kiel Institute Excellence Award, among many other institutions. In 2019, Akcigit was named the winner of the Max Plank-Humboldt Research Award (endowed with 1.5 million euros and aimed at scientists with outstanding future potential). In 2021, Akcigit was awarded the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship and was named a Fellow of the Econometric Society. In 2022, he received the Sakip Sabanci International Research Award and Kiel Institute’s Global Economy Prize.

TREVOR HOUSER is a partner with the Rhodium Group and leads the firm’s Energy & Climate team. This interdisciplinary group of policy experts, economic analysts, energy modelers, data engineers and climate scientists analyze the market impact of energy and climate policy and the economic risks of global climate change. Trevor also co-directs the Climate Impact Lab, a collaboration of leading research institutions combining climate, economic and data science to quantify climate risk around the world. Through this partnership, Rhodium provides actionable information to policymakers, investors, academics, non-profit organizations and business leaders alike. Trevor also directs the Climate Policy Fellows program at the City College of New York, his alma mater. During 2009, Trevor left Rhodium temporarily to serve as a senior advisor at the US State Department where he worked on international energy, natural resource and environmental policy issues. From 2009 to 2015 Trevor was a Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

KATHERINE O’REGAN is Professor of Public Policy and Planning at NYU Wagner. She also serves as Faculty Director of the Master of Science in Public Policy Program and Faculty Director of the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy.  She spent April 2014-January 2017 in the Obama Administration, serving as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and spent ten years teaching at the Yale School of Management prior to joining the Wagner faculty in 2000. She teaches courses in microeconomics, poverty, program evaluation, and urban economics, and has received teaching awards from Berkeley, Yale, and NYU. Her primary research interests are at the intersection of poverty and space –the conditions and fortunes of poor neighborhoods and those who live in them.  Her research includes work on a variety of affordable housing topics, from whether the Low Income Tax Credit contributes to increased economic and racial segregation, to whether the presence of housing voucher households contributes to neighborhood crime rates.   Recent work also includes several projects examining neighborhood transitions over the past few decades, including possible broad causes (changes in federal housing policy, and changes in crime, in particular), and outcomes (including possible displacement, and improvements in neighborhood conditions).  Among others, she has served on the board of the Reinvestment Fund, the advisory board for NYU’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research, and the editorial board for the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management.

INGRID GOULD ELLEN is a Professor at NYU’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and a Faculty Director at the NYU Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy. Professor Ellen’s research interests center on housing and urban policy.  She is author of Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration (Harvard University Press, 2000) and more recently editor of The Dream Revisited: Contemporary Debates About Housing, Segregation and Opportunity (Columbia University Press, 2019).  She has written numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters related to housing policy, community development, and school and neighborhood segregation. Professor Ellen has held visiting positions at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution. She attended Harvard University, where she received a bachelor’s degree in applied mathematics, an M.P.P., and a Ph.D. in public policy.