Kavita Surana

Kavita Surana holds the BMK Endowed Professorship for Data-Driven Knowledge Generation: Climate Change and is a Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna), Austria, where she leads the Institute for Data, Energy, and Sustainability. She holds additional appointments as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland College Park, USA, and Associate Faculty at Complexity Science Hub Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on technological change and climate and energy innovation, emphasizing on the interactions between public policy, businesses, and technological change and their economic and environmental impacts at the local and global levels. Her research has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature Energy, Nature Climate Change, Joule, and Research Policy. She is the Associate Editor of the journal Energy and Climate Change.

Dr. Surana was previously an Assistant Research Professor at the Center for Global Sustainability, University of Maryland College Park, and an Associate and Postdoctoral fellow in the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She has worked in organizations such as the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), the World Bank, ICF, and xista science ventures on various issues related to energy and climate innovation, public policy, and investments. She was a contributing author to chapter 16 of IPCC's 6th Assessment Report (AR6).

Dr. Surana holds a PhD in materials science and engineering from the Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble (INP-Grenoble / Université Grenoble-Alpes), France that she conducted jointly with the CEA. She holds an MS in materials for energy storage and conversion from Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France and a BSc in Physics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University, India.