Julian Cardona is a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow (2008-2009) and a Business Development Fellow for the Graduate School of Management, Center for Entrepreneurship (2008-2009). He holds a BA in Finance and International Relations and an MS in Public Administration and Public Policy. For the last two years, he has worked on conservation finance, designing and implementing long-term financial vehicles to support protected areas in Colombia. His main academic interest focuses on economic valuation of ecosystems; he is particularly keen on learning new methodologies to estimate financial feasibility of ecosystem services. Similarly, he is also interested in green business ventures development in areas such as renewable energy, integrated water management, recycling and bio-business. After completing his Humphrey Program, he plans to set up his own financial consultancy firm that will serve as a "matching point" between international investors and green entrepreneurs in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. While at UC Davis, Julian will be sharing his professional expertise and learning new methods of environmental finance. He will also be working as an Emerging Venture Analyst with the Energy Efficiency Center analyzing various projects for the Program for International Energy Technologies (PIET). For more information about Julian and his work, please click here.

Mananya Chansanchai is a PG&E Energy Efficiency Fellow for 2008-9. She is a second-year MBA Candidate at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. In her first year of business school, she held Co-Director board positions on three student-led Clubs: Events for Challenge for Charity and Women in Leadership and Career Development for Net Impact. In her second year of business school, she joined the Energy Efficiency Center as an Emerging Venture Analyst. Mananya's work has included developing a business plan for a UV wastewater disinfection technology, which won first-place in the Clean Energy/Environmental Sciences category at the Little Bang Poster Competition, market sizing of lighting technologies for K-12 schools in conjunction with the California Lighting Technology Center (CLTC) and completion of an E3 calculator for Bi-Level Smart Lighting for PG&E’s Emerging Technologies Team. Mananya graduated from UC Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Business Management Economics and has a diverse background in the banking and hospitality industries. During her Summer MBA Internship, Mananya worked at McKesson Corporation in its Business Technology Solutions group developing a business case management model for IT investments. For more information about Mananya and her work, please click here.

Jeff Gleeson is a second-year MBA student in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He is the Director of Marketing for the Associated Students of Management and the President/Director of Communications for the Davis Marketing Association. During his first year of business school, Jeff led a team of scientists and engineers to second-place in the biotechnology category of the Little Bang Competition – an achievement that took them to the semifinal round of the Big Bang Business Plan Competition. Jeff graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 2006 with a B.S. in Civil Engineering with a dual emphasis in Water Resources and Transportation. After graduating from Cal Poly, he worked in the private sector as a civil engineering analyst. His work ranged from hands-on storm water treatment design to the procurement of federal funding for local transportation and "Safe Routes to School" projects. In the summer of 2008, Jeff worked as a marketing consultant for a clean-tech lighting startup in the Bay Area. Jeff's current research at the EEC is focused on thermal storage refrigeration and a product called the Energy Vault. The Energy Vault will shift peak refrigeration loads to off-peak hours by storing thermal energy in the middle of the night. Jeff and the Energy Vault team are currently targeting open-air grocery store refrigerators and residential units. The Energy Vault project was named the winner of the energy efficiency sector of the Little Bang poster competition and is currently entered in the semi-final round of the Big Bang business plan competition. Jeff is also working to construct a lifecycle cost calculator that considers ancillary costs and benefits, beyond simple payback, for energy efficiency measures like bi-level induction lighting. This work has also tied into the use of California's E3 calculator. Jeff has accepted a full-time position with the Mass Market team of PG&E’s Customer Energy Efficiency division. He will join PG&E after graduation this summer. For more information about Jeff and his work, please click here.

Siva Gunda is a PhD student majoring in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering with a focus on alternative energy systems. His research is on the effect of sound and vibration on the transfer of gases through a porous medium, with applications towards enhancing the performance of PEM fuel cells in the area of transportation. Siva’s projects for the EEC include researching and writing a paper about fuel efficiency standards for cars, research on condensate evaporation and a cooling device for rooftop units (WicKool), developing a commercial demand response system (CEDR), exploring the use of radio controlled power plugs to help reduce standby power consumption and road surface resistance and tire pressure. WicKool and CEDR were finalists in the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Plan Competition and CEDR was selected to move on to compete in the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Venture Challenge in 2008. In 2007-08, Siva was an Edison International Energy Efficiency Fellow as well as a UC Davis Graduate School of Management Business Development Fellow. In the summer of 2008, he worked at PG&E as an intern in emerging technologies. For more information about Siva and his work, please click here.

Tracy Hsieh is a third-year undergraduate majoring in Environmentally Sustainable Business Development with a minor in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning and German from the University of California, Davis. She is a recipient of the 2005-6 Congress-Bundestag Scholarship and has studied energy efficient technology/policy in Aachen, Germany. Currently, she is focusing on measuring campus computer energy usage funded under the 2008-9 Sustainability Grant Award and the EEC. She is the 2008-9 Sustainability Intern for Student Housing as well as the EVA program. She spent the summer of 2008 studying in Taiwan and eventually hopes to work on marketing energy efficient technology in Asia. For more information about Tracy and her work, please click here.

Evan Johnson is a student at California Polytechnic State University where he is working on a BS in mechanical engineering. For the fall quarter he will be serving as an EVA and intern for the EEC. He is working on the Program for International Energy Technologies on a project that aims to develop an innovative energy storage method for the Galapagos Islands. He will also be working on the ‘Lighting the Way’ project to bring small-scale solar lighting to Zambia. For more information about Evan and his work, please click here.

Elisabetta Lambertini is an Edison International Energy Efficiency Fellow for 2008-09. She is a PhD student in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Before coming to UC Davis, she earned a Laurea (integrated BS and MS) in Environmental Engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, with a thesis on contaminated land remediation. Her interests are in the relationship between water quality and human/ecosystem health, as well as low-impact water and waste management solutions in developing and developed countries. As part of her main PhD project, she is investigating the health risks associated with virus contamination of drinking water in rural U.S. communities. While studying water systems, she also became interested in sustainable technology and development issues, and in the ties between water management and societal support systems such as energy and food production. As part of her training as an EVA, she aims to gain a better understanding of how individual perceptions and community decisions affect the adoption of appropriate/green technology and behaviors, and how such technology can be customized and marketed to fit different cultures and technology levels. As EVA, she is interested in working on LED-UV disinfection, small-scale biogas production, and the ecological effects of hydroelectric power generation. Elisabetta attended UC Davis' Green Technology Entrepreneurship Academy in July and has been selected as a Center for Entrepreneurship Business Development Fellow for 2008-09. For more information about Elisabetta and her work, please click here.

Wayne Leighty joined the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis in 2006 as a lifelong technological optimist and tinkerer. He built his first alternative-fuel vehicle at age 14, a battery-electric Honda CRX, and has since converted two diesels to waste-cooking-oil fuel. Wayne has published research on carbon stock and flux in temperate rain forests, advanced internal combustion engine vehicle technology, consumer perceptions of automobile energy use, and dynamic modeling of optimal oil production under various tax structures. His current research projects include modeling of transition dynamics in vehicle fleets, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle buy down costs, wind turbine replacement decisions, short term energy conservation in emergencies, and opportunities for information to motivate sustained driving behavior change. Having accumulated degrees in environmental science (B.S.) and economics (B.A.) from Brown University and degrees in transportation technology and policy (M.S.) and resource economics (M.S.) from UC Davis, Wayne is now working on an MBA and a PhD in Transportation Technology and Policy. While at Davis, Wayne has been a Graduate Automotive Technology Education (GATE) Fellow for two years, is the 2008-09 Chevron Graduate Fellow in transportation, and is a Dean’s Fellow at the Graduate School of Management. Wayne has worked as an environmental economics consultant, wilderness guide, general manager, and legislative chief of staff. For more information about Wayne and his work, please click here.

Zach McCaffrey is a Research Engineer for the UC Davis Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle and Energy Efficiency Center. He graduated from UC Davis in 2006 with a Master's degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. Zach's current projects include: integration of thermal storage refrigeration into a diesel/wind hybrid energy generation plant in the Galapagos Islands, modification of a spark-ignition engine to operate on hydrogen enriched land-fill gas for low NOx emissions, low-cost modular lighting system to replace or supplement kerosene in sub-Saharan Africa, and developing engine modeling software for variable valve timing in advanced spark-ignition engines. For more information about Zach and his work, please click here.

Marion Ore de Boddy is a senior in electrical engineering at UC Davis. She has received NSF, MESA and Sophomorist Club scholarships. She strongly believes that working with alternative sources of energy such as solar will not only protect the environment, but also can help reduce poverty in underdeveloped countries. She is working with the Energy Efficiency Center on “Lighting the Way Zambia,” an initiative of the Program for International Energy Technologies and will be designing and building prototype circuits for lighting modules and connections to the PV and battery. Marion is planning to volunteer in Nicaragua this coming summer in 2009 and work with solar energy in the region of Sabana Grande. For more information about Marion and her work, please click here.

Bryan Pon spent most of the last decade freelancing for Silicon Valley internet companies. When a short vacation turned into a two-year bus trip through Latin America, he knew he wanted to put his energy toward more socially positive outcomes at the international level. As a first-year graduate student in the Community Development master's program at UC Davis, Bryan is especially interested in renewable energy and technology within the subsistence markets that define much of the developing world. His strengths include project management, marketing, online applications/media, and user experience/information design. Bryan is currently working with the Program for International Energy Technologies (PIET) on solar-powered lighting in Zambia. For more information about Bryan and his work, please click here.

Tai Stillwater is a PhD student in Transportation Technology and Policy and third-year Emerging Venture Analyst. He is working as a Graduate Student Researcher under Ken Kurani at the Plug-in Hybrid Demonstration Project. His doctoral proposal is to study the impact of novel vehicle interfaces on driving behavior and fuel economy using the framework of the Theory of Planned Behavior. He was the 2007-8 CH2M Hill Fellow in transportation and received the 2007-8 Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Scholarship. Tai graduated from UC Berkeley with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2001, and worked on composite parts for the ATLAS particle detector at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) from 2000-2003. While at UC Berkeley, he participated in the Cal Human Powered Vehicle Team, winning the 00-01 racing season with a carbon fiber vehicle he helped design and manufacture, the "Bearacuda". The team broke numerous world speed records, some of which still stand. Recently, the "Bearacuda" was officially accepted into the Davis Bicycle Museum and will be on display after restoration. After leaving Berkeley, Tai spent a year traveling in developing countries and learning about the resource management problems that plague countries around the world. Back in the US, he spent a summer at the California Energy Commission before joining the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies. He recently completed his Master's Thesis, which is an investigation of how land-use features impact the adoption of car-sharing. Tai spent the Summer and Fall quarters of 2008 as an intern at Chevron Energy Solutions focusing on renewable energy design for communities. As a part of that Internship, Tai organized the successful December 2008 West Village Contributor's Forum, bringing together the Developer, Architects, Energy providers, and Energy Efficiency Affiliate companies in order to generate a productive dialogue and set the stage for making the Village a low-energy or no-energy development. For more information about Tai and his work, please click here.

Sam Wainer is a first-year MBA student at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He is Co-Director of Finance and Development for the Big Bang Business Plan Competition and Director of the MBA Ambassadors Program. Before business school Sam was a marketing consultant with a focus on sales estimation for new products. Sam has expertise in survey-based market research and has helped leading consumer goods and services companies reduce risk in product development. Since joining UC Davis, Sam has worked on several energy efficiency technology commercialization initiatives, including go-to-market research for fuel cell and compact fluorescent lighting products. Sam holds a BA in Sociology and Economics from Brandeis University. For more information about Sam, please click here.