Bio
Constantine (Costa) Samaras is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research spans energy, climate change, infrastructure and defense analysis. Costa analyzes how energy technology and infrastructure system designs affect energy use and national security, resiliency to climate change impacts, economic and innovation outcomes, and life cycle environmental externalities.
Costa is also an Adjunct Senior Researcher at the RAND Corporation and a Professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. He served on a National Academies Committee evaluating the Department of Energy's advanced transportation energy research portfolio, serves on the Transportation Research Board's Alternative Transportation Fuels and Technologies Committee, and is an editorial board member of the journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews. He has published numerous studies examining plug-in and autonomous vehicles, renewable electricity, conventional and low-carbon fuels, and the industrial capacity of the evolving energy sector. Costa has also led analyses on energy security, strategic basing, and infrastructure issues faced by the Department of Defense. He was previously a Senior Engineer at RAND, a post-doctoral fellow in the Climate Decisionmaking Center at CMU, and an engineer working on several multibillion-dollar infrastructure megaprojects in New York.
Costa received a joint Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy and from Carnegie Mellon, a M.P.A. in Public Policy from the Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University, and a B.S. in Civil Engineering from Bucknell University. He also is a Leadership and Excellence in Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professional with a building design and construction specialty.