Nidhi Kalra is director of the Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition, as well as a senior information scientist at RAND and a professor of policy analysis at the RAND School of Public Policy. Her research focuses on climate change mitigation, adaptation, and decarbonization planning, as well as tools and methods that help people and organizations make better decisions amid deep uncertainty. She is lead author on the flagship report, "The Benefits and Costs of Reaching Net Zero Emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean."
She previously served as director of RAND's San Francisco Bay Area office and codirector of RAND's Center for Decision Making Under Uncertainty. She also spearheaded RAND's autonomous vehicle policy work. Kalra is the lead author of Driving to Safety: How Many Miles of Driving Would It Take to Demonstrate Autonomous Vehicle Reliability? (2016) and coauthor of the flagship report Autonomous Vehicle Technology: A Guide for Policymakers (2016). She has testified on autonomous vehicle policy at three congressional hearings and was also an appointed commissioner for California 100, a statewide initiative inspiring a vision and strategy for California’s next century.
Kalra served as vice president of the Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty and, in 2018, served as senior technology policy adviser to then–U.S. Senator Kamala D. Harris. In 2013, as a senior decision scientist, she helped launch the World Bank's portfolio in robust decisionmaking.
She holds a Ph.D. in robotics from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute.
Ph.D. in robotics, Carnegie Mellon University; B.S. in computer science, Cornell University
Spanish; Hindi
