Marilyn Brown Named Regents Professor; Helena Mitchell Renewed as Regents Researcher

Posted November 6, 2017

The University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents (BOR) has appointed three Georgia Tech faculty members as Regents Professors, one of which is Marilyn A. Brown in the School of Public Policy, a unit in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Also reappointed as Regents Researcher was Helena Mitchell, executive director of the Center for Advanced Communications Policy in the School.

Brown is now the third Regents Professor in the School of Public Policy. Prior Regents Professors are Barry Bozeman, former professor in the School of Public Policy who is currently at the Center of Organizational Research and Design at Arizona State University, and  Regents Professor Emeritus Nancy Nersessian in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, and the School of Public Policy.

Marilyn Brown is a Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in Public Policy, where she created and currently directs the Climate and Energy Policy Lab. Her research focuses on the design and modeling of energy and climate policies, with an emphasis on the electric utility industry, energy efficiency, and resources on the customer side of the meter. She has authored more than 250 publications and six books.

Among Brown’s honors and awards, she is a co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for co-authorship of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on Mitigation of Climate Change. She has served on eight committees of the National Academies and is in her second term on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee. Since 2010, she has been a Presidential appointee to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority where her efforts have helped put the agency on a track to reduce its CO2 emissions in 2020 by 40% below 2005.

The BOR also approved the renewal of the title of Regents Researcher for Helena Mitchell (Public Policy). Mitchell was the first in the Ivan Allen College to be awarded this title. 

Each year, the college deans may nominate two academic faculty members for the Regents Professor title and one research faculty member for the Regents Researcher title. The Georgia Tech Research Institute may nominate two research faculty members for Regents Researcher. The titles are awarded upon approval of the USG chancellor and its Committee on Academic Affairs only with unanimous recommendation of the university’s president, the executive vice president for research, the chief academic officer, the appropriate academic dean, and three other faculty members.

During their October 10 meeting, the BOR also approved the renewal of the title of Regents Professor for Mark Hay (Biological Sciences), Dimitri Mavris (Aerospace Engineering), and Lora Weiss (Georgia Tech Research Institute).