The EEC guides and coordinates energy efficiency research projects in three broad areas (Agriculture and Food Processing, Buildings, and Transportation). Faculty from colleges, departments and centers across the UC Davis campus and beyond participate in all aspects of the EEC’s research, education and technological innovation.

Dick Bourne is Associate Director of the Western Cooling Efficiency Center and formerly a principal at Davis Energy Group (DEG), where he served as founding president from 1981 through 1997. A former associate professor at the University of Nebraska, Mr. Bourne has presented more than 150 special lectures, workshops and technical papers on energy subjects since 1974. He served as Chairman of ASHRAE’s radiant heating/cooling technical committee and holds 19 U.S. patents. At DEG, Mr. Bourne managed a team developing emerging energy-efficient technologies. Projects included the DualCool system for packaged rooftop cooling units, IDEC advanced two-stage evaporative cooler, the HyPak hydronic rooftop cooling unit, the NightSky night-radiative cooling system, and the SunCache low-cost solar water heating system. He has been a registered professional engineer in California since 1977. Mr. Bourne has a B.A. from Amherst College, a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from West Virginia University and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University.

Paul Erickson (EEC Transportation Track Co-Leader) is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, Director of the Hydrogen Production and Utilization Laboratory, and Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Energy GATE Center of Excellence. His research interests are in fuel cell vehicles and power systems, hydrogen production and utilization, internal combustion engines, solar energy utilization, heat and mass transfer enhancement of reacting flows, pollution prevention, and instrumentation. Dr. Erickson has a Ph.D. from the University of Florida with a minor in Environmental Engineering Science and an M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Brigham Young University.

Marshall Hunt is Program Director of the Western Cooling Efficiency Center and has been involved in energy efficiency since 1972. He has been active in the development of energy efficiency codes and standards, innovative HVAC design and construction and program management. Mr. Hunt recently completed the scoping phase of the Super Efficient Gas Water Heating Appliance Initiative with funding from the California Energy Commission Public Interest Energy Research Natural Gas Program. Since graduating from the University of California at Davis, Mr. Hunt worked for Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Pacific Management Dynamics Corp., Davis Energy Group Inc. and the California Energy Commission.

Bryan M. Jenkins (EEC Agriculture and Food Processing Track Co-Leader) is a Professor in Biological and Agricultural Engineering, Executive Director of the California Biomass Collaborative, and Director of the Energy Institute. He is working on finding a means to improve conversion and expand the beneficial use of biomass fuels. Dr. Jenkins’ laboratory studies and full-scale experiments in operating power plants are currently under way. Many of his studies are collaborative efforts with industry and national laboratories. Hi research is conducted on technologies to improve the harvest of agricultural residues for use not only as fuel, but for manufactured products as well. Dr. Jenkins is currently investigating designs for improved acquisition systems for rice straw, including the development of GIS models to assess the potential optimization of the delivery system. Materials production from biomass and agricultural wastes is also a critical issue. Sequential evaporation of drainage water through crops, trees, halophytes, and solar evaporators has been developed as a way to allow sustained farming in parts of the San Joaquin Valley of California.

Prasad Naik is a professor of management in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He is an authority on the development of new models and methods to improve the practice of marketing and advertising, including systematic approaches for designing and marketing new products, marketing budgeting, media selection, developing creative strategies, and the design and evaluation of advertising campaigns. Dr. Naik teaches courses on integrated marketing communications and new product development strategies. His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Statistica Sinica, Royal Statistical Society and Biometrika. Dr. Naik has presented his research at UC Berkeley, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard and M.I.T. as well as at national and international conferences in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India and the Netherlands. He has done consulting in sales and brand management for a wide spectrum of companies. Dr. Naik also teaches marketing in executive education programs for international wine industry professionals.

David Rapson is an Assistant Professor of Economics who joined the economics faculty at UC Davis in July 2008 after completing his Ph.D. at Boston University. Dr. Rapson is an environmental economist, specializing in the fields of energy, industrial organization and public finance. He is currently designing randomized field experiments to examine behavioral responses to interventions in the areas of energy use and appliance choice. Other projects include estimating the extent to which bio-fuel subsidies affect crop choice and firm entry decisions, and modeling demand for durable goods. Dr. Rapson is a faculty affiliate at the Institute of Transportation Studies and the Energy Efficiency Center at UC Davis. He received his M.A. in economics from Queen’s University in 2003 and an A.B. from Dartmouth College in 1999.

Konstantinos Papamichael is Co-Director of the California Lighting Technology Center and Professor in the Department of Environmental Design. During the last 25 years, he has been working on the development of energy efficiency strategies and technologies for buildings, focusing on fenestration systems and daylighting, as well as the integration of electric lighting and fenestration controls. Moreover, Dr. Papamichael has been working on the design and development of computer-based tools that facilitate energy and environmental impact considerations for building design and operation decision-making. He participates in a wide range of academic and professional activities related to computer-aided design, daylighting, electric lighting, energy and environmental impact and is author/co-author of over 70 publications related to research and development in these areas. Dr. Papamichael holds an Architectural Engineering degree from the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, a Masters in Architecture from Iowa State University with major emphasis in Building Science and a minor in Energy Systems Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley, with major emphasis in Design Theories and Methods and minors in Building Science and Computer Science.

Steve Schiller is a Visiting Scientist with the Energy Efficiency Center and has thirty years of experience in the energy industry. He has been a senior manager or CEO of four start-up energy engineering, software and project management firms, including his own which was sold to a venture capital funded firm in 2000. Mr. Schiller's career includes senior management, engineering, research and project management roles. His domestic consulting includes activity in California and other states as well as for the federal government. Mr. Schiller’s international work includes initiatives in China, Croatia, Poland, Thailand and Vietnam. He is active in efforts associated with incorporating energy efficiency into greenhouse gas reduction strategies and has served as a consultant to the U.S. EPA, The Energy Foundation, the UNFCCC and the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency. Mr. Schiller is also an internationally recognized evaluation, measurement and verification (EM&V) expert, having been responsible for many of the guidelines used in the energy efficiency industry. In addition to being a Visiting Scientist at the EEC, Mr. Schiller is a Senior Advisor with the California Institute for Energy and Environment, University of California, Office of the President. Mr. Schiller is Principal of Schiller Consulting, Inc., Board Director of the Efficiency Valuation Organization, and Vice Chairman, Board of Directors California Climate Action Registry. He holds Mechanical Engineering degrees from the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Mr. Schiller is a registered Mechanical Engineer in California.

Susan Shaheen (EEC Transportation Track Co-Leader) is Research Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center (TSRC), headquartered at the University of California, Berkeley and is the Honda Distinguished Scholar at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS-Davis). Her primary research interest is in environmentally and socially-beneficial technology applications for "smart" carsharing. She designed and tested the CarLink I and II pilot programs, using advanced technologies to support commuter carsharing services from 1997 to 2002. Carsharing has been proven to reduce auto ownership, energy use, and emissions and increase transit ridership, cycling and walking. An internationally recognized leader in innovative mobility research, Dr. Shaheen also is working on smart parking management for transit and trucks, fuel cell vehicles and infrastructure, smart growth/development, AB 32 (California’s Global Warming Solutions Act), low-speed electric modes linked to transit and older mobility. Dr. Shaheen has a Ph.D. in ecology, focusing on technology management and the environmental aspects of transportation, from UC Davis; an M.S. in public policy analysis from the University of Rochester; and a B.A. in political science and English (writing concentration) from Nazareth College. She also has graduate certificates from the University of Paris, Sorbonne and the University of Oxford (sponsored by an Eisenhower scholarship from the English Speaking Union). Dr. Shaheen completed her post-doctoral studies on advanced public transportation systems at UC Berkeley.

Sharon Shoemaker is Executive Director of the California Institute of Food and Agricultural Research (CIFAR). She is the author of several patents on novel yeast strains to convert biomass-to-ethanol and novel bacterial strains to produce new forms of cellulose. Dr. Shoemaker is currently researching the application of cellulases in biomass conversion (e.g. rice straw, wood, missed waste paper), the integration of various unit operations in biomass conversion processes (membrane filtration, enzymes) and the development of new analytical methods for quantifying specific cellulose activities. Dr. Shoemaker has a Ph.D. from Virginia Polytechnic and State University.

Tom Tomich is the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems, Director of the UC Davis Agricultural Sustainability Institute (ASI), Director of the UC ANR Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, and Professor of Community Development, Environmental Science and Policy. Prior to that, Dr. Tomich was Global Coordinator of the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn (ASB) Programme, which is hosted by the World Agroforestry Centre, headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. In his 12 years with the World Agroforestry Centre, Dr. Tomich worked with long-term collaborative partnerships in the Amazon, Congo Basin and Southeast Asia to raise the productivity and income of rural households without increasing deforestation or undermining the environment. Before heading to Kenya, he was the principal economist working on natural resource policies for the World Agroforestry Centre's Southeast Asian Regional Research Program. He has been an associate at the Harvard Institute for International Development, and a lecturer at both the J.F. Kennedy School of Government and the economics department at Harvard University. Dr. Tomich received his Bachelor's degree in economics from UC Davis, and Master's degree and Ph.D. from Stanford University's Food Research Institute. He has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University's Earth Institute and the Research School of Pacific Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Tom Turrentine is Director of the UC Davis Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle Research Center (PHEV) and Research Anthropologist at the Institute of Transportation Studies (ITS–Davis). Dr. Turrentine studies the role of travel and movement in the evolution of culture, society and lifestyle. He focuses on understanding automobile-based lifestyles, applying anthropological methods and theories to explore potential responses of car users to new technologies and policies aimed at mitigating the negative impacts of automobile infrastructure and use. Dr. Turrentine has studied consumer responses to electric vehicles, alternative fueled vehicles, micro-vehicles, station car systems, advanced traveler information, and other intelligent transportation systems. He also studies travel behavior and road systems in environmentally sensitive areas, focusing on Yosemite National Park and the Sierra Nevada region in California. Dr. Turrentine has a Ph.D. in Anthropology.