Valerie Jean Karplus

Valerie J. Karplus is the Class of 1943 Career Development Professor and an Assistant Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Karplus studies resource and environmental management in firms operating in diverse national and industry contexts, with a focus on the role of institutions and management practices in explaining performance. Karplus is an expert on China’s energy system, including technology and business model innovation, energy system governance, and the management of air pollution and climate change. She works with a collaborative team of researchers to study the micro and macro determinants of clean energy transitions in emerging markets, with a focus on China and India. She teaches Entrepreneurship without Borders, New Models for Global Business, and is currently developing a new course, together with Professor Chris Warshaw in Political Science, on Global Energy Markets and Policy.

She has previously worked in the development policy section of the German Federal Foreign Office in Berlin, Germany, as a Robert Bosch Foundation Fellow, and in the biotechnology industry in Beijing, China, as a Luce Scholar. From 2011 to 2015, she directed the MIT-Tsinghua China Energy and Climate Project, a five-year research effort focused on analyzing the design of energy and climate change policy in China, and its domestic and global impacts. She is a faculty affiliate of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, the MIT Energy Initiative, and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Karplus holds a BS in biochemistry and political science from Yale University and a PhD in engineering systems from MIT.

Research interests:  Asia; biotechnology; China; climate change; economic modeling; economic development; emerging markets; energy; environmental economics; globalization; international management; political economy; resource management; strategy; sustainability; water

Education

• Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2008 — 2011)
• MS Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006 — 2008)
• B.S. Yale University (1998 — 2002)
• Memorial High School

Companies

• Associate Professor (with tenure) Carnegie Mellon University (2020)
• Assistant Professor MIT Sloan School of Management (2014 — 2020)
• Director, China Energy and Climate Project MIT (2011 — 2020)
• Graduate Student Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2006 — 2011)
• Summer Analyst DFJ Dragon Fund (2008 — 2008)
• International Visiting Fellow Bosch Foundation (2004 — 2005)
• Research Technician California Institute of Technology (2003 — 2004)
• Luce Scholar Henry Luce Foundation (2002 — 2003)