Sophia Charan is an associate engineer at RAND and a professor at the RAND School of Public Policy. She earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering, with an emphasis on air quality. Her work focuses mainly on energy, infrastructure, critical minerals, and the impacts of climate change and extreme weather. Charan works on facility management and funding, the supply chains of critical minerals important for electric vehicles and semiconductors; investigating how extreme weather will affect unsheltered Californians; understanding the effect of heat ordinances on renters and energy grids; modeling and writing about future scenarios; and evaluating the effect of weather, regulations, and other trends on energy and infrastructure goals of U.S. military installations. Recommendations from her work have been cited as a justification for part of a County Ordinance.
B.S. in chemical engineering, Yale University; Ph.D. in chemical engineering, California Institute of Technology
