ORIE faculty member Benjamin Leibowicz was promoted from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure effective September 1, 2022.
In additional to being an Associate Professor in the ORIE graduate program within the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering, Dr. Leibowicz also holds a courtesy appointment in the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, and supervises student research in the Energy and Earth Resources graduate program.
Dr. Leibowicz develops mathematical models and methods to improve decision-making on energy and environmental policy and strategy issues. His primary research interests are energy systems, energy and climate policy analysis, integrated assessment modeling, technological change, and sustainable cities. He approaches these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective and develops modeling frameworks that combine methods from optimization, systems analysis, economic modeling, game theory, and stochastic control.
Dr. Leibowicz’s research projects are funded by federal agencies, industrial corporations, private foundations, and national laboratories, among others. He has published in many of the leading journals in his research areas including The Energy Journal, Energy Economics, Energy Policy, European Journal of Operational Research, Risk Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and Research Policy. In 2020, Dr. Leibowicz received the Outstanding Young Investigator Award from the Energy Systems Division of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). He was then named the Runner Up for the Early Career Best Paper Award given by the Energy, Natural Resources, and the Environment (ENRE) section of the Institute of Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) in 2021.
Dr. Leibowicz currently serves as an elected Board Member of both the INFORMS ENRE section and the IISE Energy Systems Division. He also serves on the Editorial Board of Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, and on the Steering Committee for the City of Austin’s revision of its Austin Community Climate Plan. From 2017 through 2020, Dr. Leibowicz served as a Cluster Chair or Co-Chair at four consecutive INFORMS Annual Meetings.
Prior to joining UT Austin, Dr. Leibowicz received both PhD and MS degrees in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and earned a BA in Physics with a minor in Economics from Harvard University. While working toward his PhD, he was a research fellow in the Energy and Transitions to New Technologies programs at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
