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Natural Gas Initiative is a cross-campus effort of the Precourt Institute for Energy.

Research

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Natural gas research at Stanford spans business, engineering, science, legal, and other social science disciplines. The Natural Gas Initiative serves as the Stanford’s center for natural gas and the Stanford’s research portfolio across campus. Research is funded by the members and supporters of the Stanford Natural Gas Initiative, as well as by a range of contracts, grants, and gifts made directly to Stanford researchers, centers, and departments.

The Stanford Natural Gas Initiative organizes its research portfolio into seven focus areas that house the bulk of our current work and organizational capability. There is a tremendous amount of overlap and synergy in the work and people involved in each focus area. For example, policy aspects of many of these focus areas draw from the same economists, policy experts, and legal scholars as our “Global Markets and Governance” focus area. Each focus area integrates the applicable science, engineering, business, and policy aspects of the program.

Seed Grant Projects

Seed research is intended to fund new exploratory research or research that does not clearly fit into one of the defined focus areas. Seed research is an important mechanism to encourage involvement in natural gas research by Stanford investigators and to maintain and develop Stanford's organizational capability in gas research. 

  • Natural Gas Leak Detection, Quantification, and Mitigation Focus Area (Rob Jackson, Adam Brandt)
    • Students involved with the project:
      • Frances Reuland (MS, ESE) - Transitioning to PhD, ESE  
      • Kevin Galvin (MS, CEE) - Transitioning to PhD, ESE  
      • Taylor Adams (post-doc, U Michigan) 
  • Development of Microbial Cell Factories for Methane-based Industrial Biotechnology (Craig Criddle, Robert Waymouth, Nils Averesch)
    • Students involved with the project:
      • Nils Averesch, Research Engineer (previous)  
      • Sulogna Chatterjee, Postdoctoral Scholar (previous)  
      • Sung-Geun Woo, Staff Scientist (current) 
      • Vrinda Sharma, MS Student 
      • Tiago Ramalho, Graduate Student, visiting 
      • Calvin Chung, Graduate Student, visiting 
      • Eliana Matos, summer intern 
      • Liangzi Zheng, MS Student
  • Energy Focus Area (Frank Wolak, Mark Thurber)
    • Students involved in the project:
      • Trevor Davis (postdoctoral scholar at PESD)
      • Ryan Triolo (Ph.D. student in Civil and Environmental Engineering)
  • Global Markets and Governance (Frank Wolak, Mark Thurber)
    • Students involved with the project:
      • Kyeyoung Shin - Masters Student / International Policy Studies
      • Chris Bruegge - Ph.D. Student / Economics
      • Christoph Graf - Postdoctoral scholar at PESD, (former)
      • Brant Walker - Predoctoral scholar at PESD, (former)
      • Trevor Davis - Research scholar at PESD
      • Ian Hardman - Research Assistant at PESD
      • Robert Huang - Graduate Research Assisant at PESD
  • Integration of Gas and Renewables (Frank Wolak, Mark Thurber)
    • Students involved in the project:
      • Trevor Davis Ph.D. - Student, Economics (former); postdoc (former); research scholar (current)
      • Ryan Triolo Ph.D. - Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering
      • Kurt Sweat Ph.D. - Student, Economics
      • Brennan Bower - Undergraduate student, Economics
      • Helen Hill  - Undergraduate student, Economics
      • Ryan Otto Lindberg  - Undergraduate student, Economics
      • Akanksha Monga - Undergraduate student, Economics
  • Methane Conversion Focus Area (Matteo Cargnello, Thomas Jaramillo, Xiaolin Zheng)
    • Students involved with the proect:
      • Dongjae Kong, graduate student in the Zheng group
      • Lauren Vallez, graduate student in the Zheng group
      • Yue Jiang, postdoc in the Zheng group.  
      • Henry Moise, 2nd year PhD student in Cargnello group, Chemical Engineering 
      • Sihe Zhang, 5th year PhD student in Jaramillo group, Chemical Engineering
  • "Natural H2" Subsurface Solutions (Tony Kovscek, Tapan Mukerji)
    • Students involved in the project:
      • Laura Froute - Postdoc
      • Yashee Mathur - PhD Student
  • Prevention of Hydrogen Embrittlement in Pipeline Alloys, Summary (Wendy Gu)
    • Students involved in the project:
      • Andrew Lee, Materials Science and Engineering PhD candidate. 
      • Adam Barsotti, Materials Science and Engineering PhD candidate. 
      • Jiyun Kang, Mechanical Engineering Postdoctoral Scholar. 
  • Satellite Technology for Methane Emissions Detection (Adam Brandt)
    • Students involved in the project:
      • Frances Reuland (MS, ESE) - Transitioning to PhD, ESE 
      • Kevin Galvin (MS, CEE) - Transitioning to PhD, ESE  
      • Taylor Adams (post-doc, U Michigan)