UT Energy Symposium

A weekly guest lecture series that is both free and open to the public and available for course credit.

In an effort to provide a multidisciplinary platform for UT faculty and students to interact on the most pressing energy issues facing our world, the Energy Institute sponsors the UT Energy Symposium (UTES), which entered its 30th semester in fall 2026. 

The UTES serves as a “convener” for the campus community, uniting students interested in energy issues with faculty and others working on sustainable energy security. Students who register for the symposium receive one credit hour for the 15-week seminar course, which is open to both undergraduate and graduate students. The course is taught in both the fall and spring semesters.

Ongoing themes for UTES include climate change policy, innovation and diffusion of energy technologies, low-carbon technology options and status, and behavioral aspects of energy consumption.

Each UTES talk is recorded and posted on this page and on the Energy Institute YouTube channel.

Instructor: Carey King
Unique Number (Fall 2026): 66045 (graduate students) / 65750 (undergraduates) 
Day & Time: Tuesday, 12:30 – 1:45 p.m.

If you need an accommodation to participate in this event, please contact Christa Hopkins, who can be reached at 512-475-8447 or christa@energy.utexas.edu, no later than five (5) business days prior to the event.


Upcoming UT Energy Symposium Talks

DateSpeakerJob Title Talk Title
September 15Alvin CambaLead Scientist & Director of Research, Lyvi AIThe Midstream Bottleneck: Why Mining More Won’t Secure America’s Critical Materials Supply Chains
September 22Zhaomiao GuoAssistant Professor, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at AustinThe Future of Energy Storage is Mobile: Unlocking EV Flexibility Through Market-Based V2G
September 29Martín Esteban González LópezProfessor, Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus GuadalajaraFrom Waste to Energy in Mexico: Technical and Policy Challenges for Resource Recovery in the Water–Energy Nexus
October 6Yicheng Zhu Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at AustinPowering the AI Revolution: A New Voltage Regulator Enabling Vertical Power Delivery for Next-Generation AI Processors
October 13Shuo Ji & Zhiping YangShuo Ji is the Director of Acquisition Processing and Geology, Viridien Group and Zhiping Yang is a Technical Project Manager, Viridien GroupAdvancing Subsalt Imaging in the US Gulf: Operational and Technical Innovations in Seismic Data Acquisition From the Laconia Sparse OBN Program
October 20Tom MurphyProfessor Emeritus of the departments of Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of California, San DiegoQuestioning Modernity: What Does Energy Do?
October 27Erica BelmontAssociate Professor, Mechanical Engineering at the University of WyomingTBD
November 3Thomas J PierpointVP, Operations, Northern Virginia Electric CooperativeTBD
November 10Charlotte De CannièreAssistant Professor at the Toulouse School of EconomicsTwo Wrongs Can Sometimes Make a Right: The Environmental Benefits of Market Power in Oil
November 17Jamie NietoProfessor of Applied Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Business, Universidad de ValladolidExploring the Biophysical Limits of the Energy Transition: An Integrated Assessment Model Analysis Using MEDEAS
December 1Rich PowellCEO, Clean Energy Buyers AssociationTBD

 

UT Energy Symposium Talks

Displaying 126 - 150 of 364

September 28, 2021

Panel discussion: Perpetual Transition and Emerging Opportunities on the Energy Landscape

Distinguished Lecture Series of the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Business:

  • Shawn Cumberland, Managing Partner, Energy Transition, Encap Investments L.P.

  • Deniz Dindoruk, Senior Development Manager, Shell

  • Will Glazener, Solution Leader, McKinsey & Company

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September 21, 2021

September 14, 2021

September 7, 2021

BaSKET: Building a Strategy for Key Energy Transitions

Mik Carbajales-Dale, Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences, Clemson University

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May 4, 2021

Accelerating the Energy Transition

Robert Kleinbaum, Technical Fellow, General Motors

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April 27, 2021

April 20, 2021

An Oxford-style Debate on the Role of Carbon Pricing to Foster a Low-Carbon Transition

Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund

Marc Hafstead, Fellow and Director, Resources for the Future

Matto Mildenberger, Assistant Professor, UC Santa Barbara

William Boyd, Professor, UCLA

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April 6, 2021

Pathways to a Net-Zero Economy

Lesley Jantarasami, Associate Director for Energy and Climate, Bipartisan Policy Center

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March 30, 2021

Crucial Decisions

Ryan Sitton, Founder and CEO, Pinnacle

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March 23, 2021

Land/Energy Nexus in Texas

Michael Young, Senior Research Scientist, Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin

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March 9, 2021

Energy: The Key to Understanding Economic Growth

Tiago Domingos, Associate Professor in Environment and Energy, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

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March 2, 2021

China's Decarbonization Challenge

Michael Davidson, Assistant Professor, School of Global Policy and Strategy and the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of the Jacobs School of Engineering, University of California San Diego

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February 9, 2021

Spatio-Temporal Learning for Enhancing the Situational Awareness of Power Grids

Hao Zhu, Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

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February 2, 2021

Our Illusory Faith in Efficiency to Decouple Energy-GDP

Dr. Paul Brockway, University Academic Fellow, Sustainability Research Institute (SRI), University of Leeds, UK

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January 26, 2021

Electricity and the Wealth of Nations

Robert Bryce, Journalist, Podcaster, and Documentary Producer

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December 1, 2020

Congressional Priorities for U.S. Energy Policy

The Honorable Lizzie Pannill Fletcher, U.S. House of Representatives (TX-7), Chair of the House Subcommittee on Energy & Member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

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November 24, 2020

U.S. Climate Policy in the Biden Administration

Noah Kaufman, Research Scholar, SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy, Columbia University 

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November 17, 2020

How to Make Power Converters Small and Efficient - and Why

Alex Hanson, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin

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November 10, 2020

Climate, Complexity and the Politics of Major Regulatory Legislation

David Spence, Professor of Law, School of Law and McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin

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October 20, 2020

The Impact of the Global Pandemic on the Energy Industry

Vincent Kaminski, Professor in the Practice of Energy Management, The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business, Rice University

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October 13, 2020

Designing Intelligent Environments Using Reinforcement Learning

Zoltan Nagy, Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Architectural and Environmental Engineering and Director, Intelligent Environments Lab, The University of Texas at Austin

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October 6, 2020

CO2CRC’s Otway Facility: An Enabler for Effective CO2 Storage

Matthias Raab, Chief Operating Officer, CO2CRC Ltd.; Max Watson, Senior Manager - Technology Development, CO2CRC Ltd.

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September 29, 2020

Natural Gas Leaks: Automating Visualization to Drastically Reduce Leak Detection Costs

Adam Brandt, Associate Professor, Department of Energy Resources Engineering, Stanford University

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