Benjamin Sovacool to receive the 2019 Graduate Alumni Achievement Award

Benjamin K. Sovacool Ph.D., 2006 will receive the 2019 Graduate Alumni Achievement Award during the Graduate Commencement Ceremony on May 16 at 2:30 p.m. in Cassell Coliseum on the university’s Blacksburg campus.

Sovacool is a professor of energy policy at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex’s School of Business, Management, and Economics in the United Kingdom. He serves as director of both the Sussex Energy Group and the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand, and is internationally known for his research, which focuses on renewable energy and energy efficiency, the politics of large-scale energy infrastructure, designing public policy to improve energy security and access to electricity, and building adaptive capacity to the consequences of climate change.

Sovacool is a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, due to be published in 2022, and is an advisor on energy to the European Commission’s Directorate General for Research and Innovation in Brussels, Belgium.

He has written numerous academic articles, book chapters, and reports, and is author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of 20 books. He also has received 20 national and international awards and honors, and has presented research at more than 150 international conferences across the globe.

As a graduate student at Virginia Tech, he worked on a large grant from the National Science Foundation’s Electric Power Networks Efficiency and Security Program analyzing the barriers to small-scale renewable electricity sources and distributed generation in the United States.

He holds a Ph.D. in science and technology studies and a master’s degree from Virginia Tech, a master’s degree from Wayne State University, and a bachelor’s degree from John Carroll University.