Faculty Associate Ian Sue Wing Promoted to Rank of Full Professor

Ian Sue Wing, a Faculty Associate and, from 2015-2018, a Faculty Research Fellow at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, has been promoted to the rank of full professor in the Department of Earth & Environment.

Prof. Sue Wing was one of 19 Charles River Campus faculty promoted to full professor.

As a Faculty Research Fellow, Prof. Sue Wing hosted Visiting Research Fellow Bas van Ruijven for a six-month appointment at the Pardee Center to pursue collaborative research on climate change impacts and on energy transitions in developing countries. One of the results was a major paper published in Nature Communications finding that by mid-century climate change will significantly increase the demand for energy, driven in large part by electricity needed for cooling. The paper, co-authored by Prof. Sue Wing and van Ruijven, finds that energy demand by 2050 will increase by 11-27 percent in a modest warming scenario, and by 25-58 percent in a high warming scenario. The findings were the result of a comprehensive, global analysis using temperature projections from 21 climate models, and population and economy projections for five socioeconomic scenarios, to calculate changes in demand for three fuels and in four economic sectors.