Dr. Arjun Makhijani
President and Senior Engineer, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Takoma Park, Maryland. Ph.D. (Engineering) University of California, Berkeley, 1972. Area of specialization: plasma physics as applied to controlled nuclear fusion. M.S. (Electrical Engineering) Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, 1967. Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical), University of Bombay, Bombay, India, 1965.
Formerly Associate Professor, Capitol College, Laurel, Maryland (part-time in 1988). Visiting Professor, National Institute of Bank Management, Bombay, India. Principal responsibility: evaluation of the Institute's extensive pilot rural development program.
Project Specialist, Ford Foundation Energy Policy Project. Responsibilities included research and writing on the technical and economic aspects of energy conservation and supply in the U.S.; analysis of Third World rural energy problems; preparation of requests for proposals; evaluation of proposals; and the management of grants made by the Project to other institutions.
Assistant Electrical Engineer, Kaiser Engineers, Oakland California. Responsibilities included the design and checking of the electrical aspects of mineral industries such as cement plants, and plants for processing mineral ores such as lead and uranium ores. Pioneered the use of the desk-top computer at Kaiser Engineers for performing electrical design calculations.
Author of Ecology and Genetics, a new theoretical exploration
of the connections between the genetic structures of living beings
and the ecosystems they need to survive (2001). Principal author
of: (i) the first overall study of energy efficiency potential
of the US economy (1971); (ii) the first global analysis of energy
and agriculture in the Third World (1975); and (iii) the first
independent re-assessment of radioactivity emissions from a nuclear
weapons plant (1989). Principal editor and co-author of the first
global assessment of the health and environmental effects of nuclear
weapons production (Nuclear Wastelands, 1995), which was nominated
for a Pulitzer Prize by MIT Press.
Co-author of (i) the first technical study to show that de-coupling
of economic growth from energy use growth was possible (1974);
(ii) the first complete audit of the cost of the US nuclear weapons
program (1998
Awards: The John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism of the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University,1989, with Robert Alvarez. The Josephine Butler Nuclear Free Future Award, 2001.
Consulting Experience, Consultant on a wide variety of issues relating to technical and economic analyses of alternative energy sources; electric utility rates and investment planning; energy conservation; analysis of energy use in agriculture; US energy policy; energy policy for the Third World; evaluations of portions of the nuclear fuel cycle. Partial list of institutions to which I was a consultant in the 1975-87 period: