Karen Polenske

Karen R. Polenske is director of the multiregional planning (MRP) research team. Since earning her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 1966, she has conducted energy, environment, and transportation projects in many U.S. regions, including Appalachia, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, as well as outside the United States, including Brazil, China, Iran, and other countries. By the 1990s, her innovative group of collaborators included anthropologists, chemical engineers, energy, environmental, and transportation planners, lawyers, physicists, and public-health scholars. She is well-known as one of the most prominent input-output economists in the world and for her work on regional energy and environmental issues. She is a Fellow of the International Input-Output Association (IIOA) and of the Regional Science Association International (RSAI). She was President of the IIOA (1995-2000) and Head of the International Development and Regional Planning Group in DUSP (1995-2006). Her publications include numerous articles in key economic and planning journals, and eight books, including The Technology-Energy-Environment-Health (TEEH) Chain in China and The Economic Geography of Innovation that are published both in English and Chinese. She received the 2008 Sloan Industry Studies Best Book Award for the TEEH book.