Director and Key Personnel
Yunshi Wang is the director of C-CET. As an energy economist, he has worked with the World Bank and the Japanese Government. He has been conducting research on the Chinese economy with Dean Emeritus and Professor Lester Thurow at the MIT Sloan School of Management (still on contract). He reports to Daniel Sperling, director of ITS-Davis.
Professor Sperling has considerable experience with China and with other developing economies. He served on a joint committee of the U.S. National Academies and China Academy of Sciences that produced the book, Personal Cars in China (2003), and recently completed a study on rural vehicles in China. He founded ITS-Davis, leading it to international prominence. Under his leadership, ITS-Davis was the first interdisciplinary center in the UC system to host an interdisciplinary graduate program and is funded by virtually every major energy and car company in the world, as well as many government agencies, while retaining strong support from the environmental community. He was recently named by California Governor Schwarzenegger to the state’s Air Resources Board.
Senior researchers at UC Davis include Professors Joan Ogden, who is perhaps the most prominent hydrogen fuels researcher in the world. She plays a lead role in various U.S. DOE hydrogen research programs, is the academic representative on Governor Schwarzenegger’s Hydrogen Highway Blueprint board, and is co-director (with Sperling) of the ITS-Davis Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways (STEPS) program. Another is Professor Patricia Mokhtarian, an expert on travel behavior, who is the chair of the Transportation Technology and Policy graduate group at UC Davis. Dr. Andrew Burke is a leading international expert on super-capacitors and powertrain designs for hybrid-electric vehicles. Dr. Paul Erickson is a leading expert on small-scale hydrocarbon reformers, especially for converting coal-derived methanol into hydrogen.
Other ITS-Davis researchers have even more expertise and experience with China. Professor Michael Zhang is a leading transportation systems expert who graduated from China’s Tongji University and continues to work closely with researchers there through the prestigious “Changjiang Scholars,” a program to finance outstanding overseas Chinese scholars to give lectures or do research in 28 key universities. Professor Yueyue Fan is a graduate of Dalian University with expertise on energy and logistical systems and continuing connections to researchers at Dalian.
Affiliated researchers in the UC system include Professor Alison Berry, Environmental Horticulture, University of California, Davis; Professor David Bunch, Graduate School of Management; Dr. Mark Delucchi, Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Davis; Professor Paul Erickson, Mechanical & Aeronautical Engineering; Kenneth Kurani, Institute of Transportation Studies; Professor Scott Rozelle, Agricultural & Resource Economics; Dr. Thomas Turrentine, Institute of Transportation Studies.